The greatest of all time. That question gets asked in sports so many times. And you ask any 10 fans who is the greatest, you will get 10 different answers. Younger fans usually base their answer on players they have seen. Older fans tend to stick to who was the best in the era they associate with. The stat geeks go to the stats, and then dissect everything and re-evaluate, then make what they consider a solid choice.
Perhaps the wisest choice is to judge players by the era they played in, since today’s game in no way looks the same as it did when the Brooklyn Atlantic’s played in the 1890’s.