Day: November 28, 2005

Wow . . . and wow.

First, and the Washington Post reports that in a Japanese poll in which respondents were asked to list their ideal bosses, healing Bobby Valentine made the top ten–the only foreigner.

Second, an article on the AP wire reports that Raul Mondesi–you know, the guy who was more or less run out of Major League Baseball for being a party machine rather than an outfielder–is running for mayor of his hometown, San Cristobal, in the Dominican Republic.

Back to Bill James

From the 1988 Baseball Abstract, preceded by six pages of imaginary dialogue, here’s Bill James’s list of the 20 best players in baseball:

  1. Wade Boggs
  2. Tim Raines
  3. Ozzie Smith
  4. Don Mattingly
  5. Tony Gwynn
  6. Darryl Strawberry
  7. Dale Murphy
  8. Roger Clemens
  9. Rickey Henderson
  10. Kirby Puckett
  11. Mike Schmidt
  12. George Bell
  13. Jack Morris
  14. Pedro Guerrero
  15. Alan Trammell
  16. Eric Davis
  17. Ryne Sandberg
  18. Phil Bradley
  19. Dwight Gooden
  20. Dwight Evans

With the benefit of hindsight, this still looks like a pretty good list, except maybe for Phil Bradley.

By the way, if Levi is even more scarce around here than usual, it’s because he’s got his very own blog now, solely devoted to books he’s been reading lately. He reads a lot.