Ted Williams, Ty Cobb, Barry Bonds and Others Prove MLB Is a Team Game

There have been many great baseball players that never were on a world championship team, primarily because baseball is a team game.

Ty Cobb, Nap Lajoie, George Sisler, Ted Williams, Willie McCovey, Ernie Banks, Carl Yastrzemski, Harmon Killebrew, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, Prince Fielder,  Johan Santana and Roy Halladay—all of these men rank among baseball’s elite.

None of them had the help needed to get their team over the top. The fact that they never played for a world champion does not make them any less great.

Ty Cobb, considered the greatest player of all time until the late 1940s and early 1950s, appeared in the World Series three consecutive seasons, from 1907-1909. The Chicago Cubs beat Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in both 1907 and 1908. The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Tigers in 1909.

In 1908, Cobb hit .368, but his World Series average was only .262 with four doubles, a triple and four stolen bases in eight attempts.

Nap Lajoie batted .338 lifetime and won the Triple Crown in 1901 when he hit .426. He never was on a pennant winner.

George Sisler, who—like Cobb—is not ranked as highly today as he had been in the 1940s and 1950s, batted .340 and hit over .400 twice, but was never in the World Series.

Ernie Banks, who was one of the first power hitting shortstops (see Vern Stephens), was the National League’s MVP twice, but he played for the Cubs, the team whose last World Championship came against Cobb’s Tigers in 1908. Banks never appeared in a World Series.

Ted Williams was a better hitter than Barry Bonds.  Both appeared in one World Series, which their teams lost. In 1946, the Boston Red Sox won the pennant but lost a heartbreaking seventh game to the St. Louis Cardinals. Williams had five singles in 25 at-bats with one RBI in the Series.

Bonds’ only World Series appearance was in 2002 against the name-challenged Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Barry hit .471 with four home runs and 13 walks in a losing effort. In 41 playoff games, Bonds batted .216 with five home runs.

The San Francisco Giants' Willie McCovey was a great power hitter whose teammates included Willie Mays and Orlando Cepeda.  McCovey is remembered primarily for hitting a vicious line drive that Bobby Richardson caught to end the 1962 World Series.

McCovey hit as many career home runs as Ted Williams (521), but he hit only .200 with one home run in the 1962 Series against the New York Yankees.

Carl Yastrzemski and Harmon Killebrew played during the 1960s. Yaz batted .352 in two World Series.  Each was in a losing effort as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Red Sox in 1967 and the Cincinnati Reds beat them in 1975.

Killebrew appeared only in the 1965 Series, hitting .286 in a losing effort against Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The point of all this is that no one can deny the greatness of the above players, despite their lack of success in the World Series.

All but Sosa, Bonds, and Rodriguez are in the Hall of Fame. We all know why each of them will have difficulty becoming members.

Teams, not great players, win championships. The fact that these players never were World Champions does not diminish their greatness.

Still, if you had to pick Sammy Sosa or Kirk Gibson or Barry Bonds or Paul O'Neill going into the playoffs....