I wonder what Mark McGwire is doing. I still haven't gotten over his quick demise and quick exit. Is he really a Hall of Famer? I look at his all time stats today and he only had 1600+ career hits. He had a hundred less RBI in his career than Mickey Mantle who had fifty less homers. He had a lifetime batting average of .263. He only has 84 more lifetime extra base hits than Wade Boggs (841 to 775). He is the only one of the top six home run hitters of all time to not also have five hundred doubles. McGwire had 252. Aaron had over 600! Bonds has over 500.

McGwire's stats compare closely with Harmon Killebrew. But Killebrew played in the era of pitching dominance when Carl Yazstrzemski won batting titles with a .301 average! I kind of feel like Simon on The American Idol. McGwire's stats don't thrill me. He could have done better and I believe he will get into the Hall of Fame on reputation. Sammy Sosa is having a much better career.

The all time stats are a fascinating place to hang out. Do you know that Stan Musial had over 1300 extra base hits in his career? 1300!?! That translates to 475 homers, 177 triples (that's ten a year for 17 years!) and 725 doubles. Holy smokes! He also had 3600 hits, drove in over 1900 runs...and this one is going to nail you...only had 696 strikeouts in his 22 year career. Amazing. In his best season, he hit .370 with 39 homers, 46 doubles, 18 triples and drove in 130 runs while only striking out 34 times in 611 at bats. Yet, how much do you hear about this guy? You hear about his peers like Dimaggio and Ted Williams, but this guy should be mentioned in the same breath.

Some more cool stats: Did you know that Carl Yazstrzemski finished seventh on the all time doubles list with 646? George Brett ended up fifth with 665. If you look at all the major statistics, Wade Boggs had a much better career than Tony Gwynn in every category except for average (Gwynn .338 to Boggs .328).

Did you know that Eddie Murray finished eigth on the all time list for RBI?

When you mention stolen bases, which players do you think of? Rickey Henderson of course. And then you think of Lou Brock and Maury Wills (and maybe Vince Coleman). Rickey had an 80% success ratio when stealing and Brock and Wills were 75% and 74% respectively. Who would have thought that Bert Campaneris had more steals than Wills and was successful 76.5% of the time! But the best modern stolen base guy? Tim Raines is fourth all time in total stolen bases and was successful a staggering 85% of the time (Ty Cobb was successful 84% of the time).

Two great sites for all time statistics are http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/alltime/leaders?type=0 and of course, http://www.mlb.com.