ESPN published its Top 100 ballplayers of all-time last week and, through some fortuitous communications, I was able to spend a chunk of my Friday morning talking baseball with ESPN Senior Writer David Schoenfield. For the first half of our conversation, focused on specific questions of Yankees on the top-100, head here.
Abstract considerations were also threaded through our conversation about specific players. As we discussed legends of Yankees past, questions of methodology, historical analogs, and how to think about baseball’s long history kept cropping up. First, for a rundown of ESPN’s methodology, check this out (and while you are there, check out the list and the complementary discussions that accompany it if you have not already).