In Baseball, We Look Back…

…and in football we look forward. I think about this all the time now.

Bill James put up a fascinating little Twitterex poll, basically asking this question:

Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris OR Aaron Judge and Juan Soto?

What made this poll fascinating—and it would be great if you voted on the poll before you read on—is the result.

But before I get to that result and the point of this column—which you can probably extract from the headline—I followed it up with my own mirror poll, one, I’m pretty proud of, I have to say:

Johnny Unitas and John Mackey OR Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce?

First, let me say: I think the polls are pretty darn balanced. That is to say, I think that Unitas and Mackey, as teammates, carry the same iconic gravitas as Mantle and Maris… same goes with Judge-Soto and Mahomes-Kelce. It’s impossible to make the comparisons exactly the same, since we’re talking about different sports, but I love the equilibrium of the two polls.

Even more than that, I love the RESULTS of the two polls, because they confirm this overpowering belief that has been growing in my mind over the last two years as I wrote WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL followed immediately by WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL.

Let me give Bill’s results first