he meant to shine, to the end of the line.

I make lists.  I love reading lists.  If someone’s being called the greatest player ever in their sport, I want to see where they fit in a list – why not number two, or number three?  Who else would fill those spots?  So naturally I was excited when I found a list of the greatest players in baseball via a stat called wins above replacement (WAR), i.e., how many more wins a player contributed to his team than the average player at his position.

If you average WAR out per season (roughly 700 plate appearances, although that’s on the high side), the only current players in the top 25 are Alex Rodriguez (no. 20), Joe Mauer (no. 14), and Albert Pujols (no. 6, I can dig it).  If we go by totals WAR, Pujols is only 40^th overall.  Coming in at number one in both lists is, unsurprisingly, Babe Ruth.  His total WAR of 172 is only six tenths of a win higher than Barry Bonds, but Ruth’s value averages out to more than two full wins a season better than Bonds.  Add in Ruth’s value as a pitcher—another 18 total wins—and his total of 190 WAR is effectively untouchable.

Ruth was a singularly dominant player, and he was a singularly beloved personality.  He was maybe the most famous American of his time (although Charles Lindbergh would certainly have a case) and has since been ensconced not only in the Hall of Fame but also in baseball lore.  Ruth is, along with Cy Young, a central deity, whose larger-than-life antics seem innocent after (and, in part, helped to facilitate) decades of mythologizing.  Ruth’s alcoholism and womanizing are venal offenses compared to, say, Ty Cobb’s violent racism, Shoeless Joe Jackson and the Black Sox, or decades of greenies, steroid controversy, and centaur portraits.  Instead, they're proof of his humanity.  Ruth is the great American athlete, and rightfully so—no one has ever dominated a sport as thoroughly as he dominated baseball, nor combined talent with humanity like he did. 

Football, true to its roots as the most democratic of American sports, has many candidates for the position of greatest ever.  Quarterbacks are the most obvious:  Otto Graham and Bart Starr, the definitive winners; Johnny Unitas, the pioneer; Joe Montana, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning, all master practitioners of innovative strategies.  Running backs are also awash with possibilities:  Jim Brown and Barry Sanders, the best pure runners; Walter Payton and Emmitt Smith, well-rounded workhorses; Marshall Faulk and LaDainian Tomlinson, who redefined the position.  The competition runs deep at every position except wide receiver, and even with a well-established pantheon, there’s no Zeus here.

now they got the sun and they got the palm trees, they got the weed and they got the taxis.

--First off, for Firefox at least, if you want to open a link in a new window, hold CTRL and click on it.  Second, sorry for the hiatus - I've been ridiculously busy with the home stretch of schoolwork/out of the country (in Texas).

--This truly is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, and provides superfluous evidence that every Hollywood exec in existence is ten years old.  In other news, though I generally shy away from Sean O'Neal's reviews, the man can write a headline.

--Speaking of the AV Club, their weekly series of covers by visiting musicians, AV Club Undercover, has been consistently good thus far.  Ben Folds' cover of Elliott Smith's "Say Yes" last week was my favorite of the bunch, and I can't wait for the "Two-Headed Boy" cover.

--Here's what this blog will look like when Geocities makes its inevitable comeback.  The internet is the best sometimes.

--And yet, it is also the worst sometimes.  Though Betty White has acquitted herself pretty admirably in her recent TV spots, the people who are clamoring for an octogenarian to return to the forefront of TV comedy right now deserve to watch this happen.  Sorry, Betty - it's...evolving.

--Whoever thought to do this is a saint.  Although I haven't been able to keep up with Treme as much as I'd like (and yikes has it gotten preachy), I can still appreciate the music, and it helps me get through the tedium of my job.

i tell you, like before, you should say his name the way he said yours.

I was trying - futilely, as it turned out - to do some research on the Mensheviks with this awful ringtone rap/Beyonce + thick-ass beats = profit/churning unremarkable synth-pop anthem party going on outside.  Just boring, reprehensible music.  Here's what I decided to do instead, before holing up in the library:

--This video is a beautiful idea beautifully executed; it's the Platonic ideal of ironic, retrosexual youtube videos.  "Help," by the way, has to be in my top five Beatles songs.  (h/t Videogum).

--Grant Hill seems like a cool guy, and J.A. Adande has a nice piece on what really is an incredible - and tragic, in the traditional sense of the word - story.  Speaking of current Phoenix Suns, Love in the Time of LeBron has some compelling reasons to like Channing Frye, the team's enormous Stephen Curry, and Steve Nash, the most consciously anti-mainstream MVP in any sport.  My favorites:  the most ridiculous man in the world, and the futuristic, web 2.0 commercial for VitaminWater's facebook.  (h/t SB Nation).