The Most Famous Baseball Players of the Last 50 Years—the Countdown Begins!
OK, here we go, today we begin our countdown of the most famous players in the last 50 years. A handful of very quick explainer points:
This is my list, based on my super-secret formula. I know there were some of you who asked me to put the formula here, but I’m not going to do that because it’s an absurd formula filled with countless illogical twists and some very bad math. I don’t care, because it spits out a list that I like very much. I’d rather you argue with me about the people than the formula.
People who were retired by 1974 are not eligible. Basically, there are two all-time greats—Henry Aaron and Frank Robinson—who were not retired by 1974 and, in fact, achieved incredible things in the last 50 years. So they are on the list. But Willie Mays, who retired in 1973, is not. I had to have a cutoff because I really wanted this list to cover more modern baseball, and this made the most sense to me. There is no doubt that Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, Mickey Mantle and other retired giants were more famous over the last 50 years than plenty of people of others on the list. Their fame isn’t in question.
The qualification for being considered was simple: You had to be on the cover of Sports Illustrated since 1970. Because several non-players were on the cover—owners, announcers, umpires, etc.—they are eligible to be in the top 50 and, as you will see soon enough, at least one made it.
There were almost 300,000 votes in the Fame Game that I created last week*, which is incredible. Those votes were technically not a component of my super-secret fame formula, but I will tell you where you ranked each person.
*Based on what seemed to be a pretty emotional reaction to my throwaway bit about television broadcasters on Monday, I’m going to create another game in the next day or two featuring the top TV broadcasters ever, and you can vote on that one, too.
I was going to roll this out five players at a time—and I reserve the right to do that as we go forward—but I think the fun of this is to take our time and really explore these famous baseball folks. I started writing today’s entry and I just kept going and going and finally decided: Eh, we’re going to do these one at a time, what’s the hurry?
All right, here we go: The most famous baseball players of the last 50 years!