Baseball's Greatest Players: The Pariahs and 10 numbers that define them originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
They cheated. They lied. They discriminated. Baseball has exiled them for defiling the game’s integrity, yet its record would be incomplete without them.
A visit to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown reveals both its magic and its shortcomings. One cannot possibly peruse the plaque gallery - baseball’s holy of holies where its deities are immortalized - without being moved. It is a place every fan should visit to soak in the incomparable history of our national pastime.
The Hall’s stated mission: “to preserve the sport's history, honor excellence within the game and make a connection between the generations of people who enjoy baseball.”
In recent years, the Hall’s election process - a democratic one that has been practiced since 1936 - has shut out many of the best players in baseball history because of their connections to performance-enhancing drugs. Meanwhile, various committees have lowered the Hall of Fame standard considerably, electing objectively lesser players relative to many still excluded.
The result is an institution annually under siege.
In The Sporting News 140: Baseball's Greatest Players, we made it our devout mission to get right what the Hall of Fame does not and perhaps cannot. Our 140-player collection means we feature baseball’s veritable cream of the crop (by comparison, the HOF includes more than 270 players). And our Hall of Fame “rooms” serve not only to honor the game’s greatest players, but to contextualize their standing in baseball history, both good and bad.
This room includes ten players, some of whom are unquestionably among the best of all-time, but not among the greatest. Being the best is a science, measured by performance; being the greatest is an art, weighing what a player accomplished and whether he deserves not merely recognition, but honor.
These are the Pariahs.
BASEBALL'S GREATEST PLAYERS
Immortals | Artists | Unicorns | Juggernauts | Supernovas | Unsung | Showmen | What-Ifs | Pioneers | Prodigies | Stalwarts | Beloved
(Editor's note: Each hyperlinked name takes you to that player's page within the digitized SN Archive. Once registered (it's free!), readers have instant access to every article and cover related to each player, as they originally appeared in print.)
Baseball's Greatest Players: The Pariahs
Mark McGwire
There is no starker juxtaposition than Mark McGwire embracing Roger Maris’ family in 1998, only to shrivel before Congress when his comeuppance came.
Mark McGwire owns five of the top six at bat/home run seasons of all-time (min. 200 AB), all coming in the six seasons spanning 1995-00.
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Sammy Sosa
Many of the same baseball fans Sammy Sosa helped bring back in the summer of ’98 turned their backs on him when they learned those homers may not have been hit authentically.
Sosa owns the all-time record for home runs in five-season span (292 in 1998-02), six-season span (332 in 1998-03), seven-season span (368 in 1996-02, 1997-03), eight-season span (408 in 1996-03), nine-season span (444 in 1995-03) and 10-season span (479 in 1995-04).
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Shoeless Joe Jackson
Shoeless Joe Jackson will forever be ostracized from baseball for his role in authoring the game’s darkest chapter - throwing the 1919 World Series.
Shoeless Joe went 12-32 in the 1919 World Series (.375 AVG, teammates combined to hit .203), tying a WS hits record not surpassed until Bobby Richardson in 1964; he was the only player to homer in the series.
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Pete Rose
Pete Rose spent his entire career playing baseball the right way, and the final 35 years of his life paying for breaking baseball’s unbreakable rule.
Rose recorded 1,540 hits in his twenties (43rd all-time), 2,025 in his thirties (2nd all-time) and 691 in his forties (most all-time).
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Alex Rodriguez
“I served the longest suspension in major league baseball history,” Alex Rodriguez said, “It cost me well over 35 million dollars, and you know what? I deserved that.”
Rodriguez led the AL in WAR from 1996-03 (64.2) as a shortstop and from 2004-13 (52.2) as a third baseman.
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Manny Ramirez
While we suspect many of Manny Ramirez’s contemporaries juiced, we know he did, and those two positive tests sealed his fate outside Cooperstown.
Ramirez, who debuted in 1993, owns the fourth-highest batting average (.312) among members of the 500-home run club; the average debut season of the top three is 1926 (Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Jimmie Foxx).
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Roberto Alomar
Spitting on an umpire likely cost Roberto Alomar first-ballot Hall of Fame induction, but an even greater disgrace awaited him after Cooperstown: a place on baseball’s permanently ineligible list, where he remains.
Alomar batted .373 with the Blue Jays in the postseason; that is the highest average by any player on any team with whom he had more than 100 plate appearances.
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Cap Anson
Cap Anson’s racist edict and its prejudicial aftermath obscure his playing career, widely regarded as the greatest of the 19th century.
Anson retired (after 1897 season) as the all-time leader in runs (1,999), extra base hits (821), and total bases (4,592); he produced more WAR (94.3) than any position player during the 19th century.
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Roger Clemens
Roger Clemens fought to clear his name in court and won, but the most accomplished pitcher in history was never acquitted in the court of public opinion.
Clemens went 18 years between his first (1986) and last (2004) Cy Young; that is seven years longer than the next-longest gap of its kind (Justin Verlander: 11 (2011, 2022)).
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Barry Bonds
Barry Bonds watched lesser players celebrated for their home run exploits and decided being history’s best all-around player just wasn’t enough.
Bonds posted a 256 OPS+ in 2001-04 across the ages of 36-39; Babe Ruth's career-high in a season was 255 (1920).
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Our process for Baseball's Greatest Players
Every week through the end of the World Series, we'll unveil one room at a time — 10 players along with the numbers that define them — culminating in the Inner Circle, the 10 greatest to ever play, period.
We researched and considered over 500 names, weighing not only fundamental changes to the game, but also factoring in modern metrics, recently uncovered Negro Leagues data, shifting league demographics and the evolution of today's stars. We stripped away preconceptions and applied objective, critical analysis to every player under consideration.
SN140:Baseball's greatest 25 teams since 1886
Once we landed on 140 names, we decided that traditional rankings simply don't work for baseball. How is one to honestly assess if Cy Young — a pitcher whose career began in the 19th century — is greater than Albert Pujols, a 21st-century slugger? How do you compare Josh Gibson in the Negro Leagues to Jackie Robinson in the National League?
Instead, we created 14 position-less rooms, each representing and articulating varying archetypes of greatness.
- Immortals
- Artists
- Unicorns
- Juggernauts
- Supernovas
- Unsung
- Showmen
- What-ifs
- Pioneers
- Prodigies
- Stalwarts
- Beloved
- Pariahs
- Inner Circle
From there, we slotted 10 players into each room with careers connected by defining common threads.
We factored in modern metrics, recognized and utilized now accessible Negro Leagues data, contextualized changing league demographics, considered functional changes to the game such as strike zone and mound height adjustments, and included active players alongside their historical counterparts.
The result?
The most unique, comprehensive and celebratory evaluation to date of Baseball's Greatest Players.