To me there is really no discussion necessary when it comes to who the greatest player ever is. with a career .342 average, .474 OBP, .690 slugging, some quick addition shows a career OBPS of 1.064 which for many hall of famer's is better then their best season, not to mention 714 career home runs at a time when he was hitting more in a season then a lot of team totals, there just doesn’t seem to be any question that Babe Ruth is the greatest player ever. Yes Ty Cobb and Rickey Henderson are both fantastic players, but looking at the stats they seem a mile behind. Ty Cobb's career batting average is only 24 points higher then Ruth’s, and is OBP is 41 points lower, not to mention his home run, RBI, and slugging numbers that are much lower. As for Rickey Henderson, his career batting average is 63 points lower then Ruth’s, known as the master of getting on base, his OBP is still 73 points lower then Ruth’s and yes he stole a ton of bases, but like Cobb, Ruth’s power numbers are simply ridicules especially given the era. It is also interesting to note that Ruth actually has 123 career stolen bases, which is not too bad.

As is all of this was not enough to prove the point, it is usually forgotten that Ruth has a career 2.28 ERA as a pitcher, and a .671 winning percentage. Those numbers project as a hall of famer if he had of kept pitching his entire career.

So case closed, Babe Ruth is the greatest player of all time!

Greatest player ever will be next poll, but I think you are probably right - Ruth's pitching likely puts him ahead of anyone and by a lot.

But don't credit him as a good base-stealer. Sure, he stole 123, but he also had 117 caught stealings -- in other words, Rickey stole more than 11 times as many bases as Ruth (1,406-123) but was caught stealing only about three times as often (335-117). And lest we forget, Ruth actually has the ignominy of ending a World Series by being thrown out trying to steal second!

Interesting stuff!

I threw the stolen bases stat in there more or less to show that he actually had more career stolen bases then Ty Cobb did home runs, which i found kind of impressive

I wonder if anybody has ended a World Series by getting thrown out at third. And I don't just mean stealing; going from 1st to 3rd on a single or something like that.

Maybe it was just a typo, but Ruth's career OPS was actually 1.164.

He's also the only player ever with a career OPS+ over 200.

It would be wonderful to someday see another player even nearly as good as Ruth.