The greatest baseball player of all time is...

...fodder for a passionate months-long debate that will either engage you for hours or bore you to death, based on your degree of appreciation of baseball history. What makes someone the "greatest" anything is certainly a subjective matter, and cannot be scientifically proven. But when it comes to America's favorite pastime (after football, basketball, and soccer), sports talk about who belongs on baseball's Mount Rushmore can be raucously fun, even while often inane. Certainly you will hear names like Ruth, Aaron, or Mays thrown around, or maybe more recent players like Ripken, Ryan, or Seaver, but a new baseball pantheon based on "era-adjusted statistics" is turning lots of heads. In July, Full House Modeling dropped a computer-generated ranking of baseball's top 100 players based on "career era-adjusted wins above replacement (ebWAR)." In layman's terms, this means that technology was used to place each player in the context of other players of their era and the size of the MLB talent pool during their careers. Under this model, great all-time statistics require that an MLB player is both better than his peers and played during a time in which the talent pool is large. In this way, the model constructs an even playing field that extends across eras. The Full House model allows for late 20th and early 21st century baseballers, who dominated when it was statistically harder to distinguish one's self, to outrank many of the usual suspects.

The results of this new ranking were fascinating. Here are the Top 20 baseball players in MLB history according to Full House Modeling:

You can find the next eighty top players online. Populating this list are athletes from one hundred years of the sport, evaluated for the first time based on the quality of the competition in their generation. The Full House people recognize that the truest measure of a man must incorporate an assessment of his context. Our Torah acknowledges this very early on:

נֹחַ אִישׁ צַדִּיק תָּמִים הָיָה בְּדֹרֹתָיו

Noach was a righteous man, blameless in his generation.

That extra word בְּדֹרֹתָיו leads our rabbis to debate Noach's place in Tanach's Top 20 list (Sanhedrin 108 as paraphrased by Rashi):

יֵשׁ מֵרַבּוֹתֵינוּ דּוֹרְשִׁים אוֹתוֹ לְשֶׁבַח, כָּל שֶׁכֵּן אִלּוּ הָיָה בְדוֹר צַדִּיקִים הָיָה צַדִּיק יוֹתֵר; וְיֵשׁ שֶׁדּוֹרְשִׁים אוֹתוֹ לִגְנַאי, לְפִי דוֹרוֹ הָיָה צַדִּיק וְאִלּוּ הָיָה בְדוֹרוֹ שֶׁל אַבְרָהָם לֹא הָיָה נֶחְשָׁב לִכְלוּם

Some of our Rabbis explain it (this word) to his credit: he was righteous even in his generation; it follows that had he lived in a generation of righteous people he would have been even more righteous owing to the force of good example. Others, however, explain it to his discredit: in comparison with his own generation he was accounted righteous, but had he lived in the generation of Avraham he would have been accounted as of no importance.

This week in Shoftim, the Torah once again stresses the critical nature of generational context. While instructing the Jewish people to always seek halachic guidance and dispute resolution from their religious leaders, Moshe Rabbeinu says:

וּבָאתָ אֶל־הַכֹּהֲנִים הַלְוִיִּם וְאֶל־הַשֹּׁפֵט אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם וְדָרַשְׁתָּ וְהִגִּידוּ לְךָ אֵת דְּבַר הַמִּשְׁפָּט׃

And appear before the levitical priests, or the judge who is in those days, and present your problem. And they will announce to you the verdict in the case.

Of course the rabbis are curious about that seemingly extraneous phrase (Rosh Hashanah 25b):

וְכִי תַּעֲלֶה עַל דַּעְתְּךָ שֶׁאָדָם הוֹלֵךְ אֵצֶל הַדַּיָּין שֶׁלֹּא הָיָה בְּיָמָיו? הָא אֵין לְךָ לֵילֵךְ אֶלָּא אֵצֶל שׁוֹפֵט שֶׁבְּיָמָיו. וְאוֹמֵר: ״אַל תֹּאמַר מֶה הָיָה שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשׁוֹנִים הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה״

But can it enter your mind that a person can go to a judge that is not alive in his days? What, then, is the meaning of the phrase “in those days”? It teaches that you need to go only to the judge in one’s days, i.e., he is authorized to judge and decide matters. And it also says: “Do not say: How was it that the former days were better than these? For it is not out of wisdom that you inquire concerning this” (Koheles 7:10). Instead, one must accept the rulings of the leaders of his generation.

When it comes to halachic decision-making, nostalgia for a bygone era of Torah luminaries is misplaced. Certainly there were greater authorities in previous generations, on whose shoulders we stand, but Torah guidance does not emanate from them anymore. It is foolish, as Koheles reminds us, to pine for psak from those who have passed. We deal with the cards we have been dealt right now. We consult the gedolim before our eyes, not the ones on the biography bookshelf. 

Era-adjusted statistics celebrate the qualities of the era in which one lives. The immortal words of Koheles deserve emphasis here:

אַל־תֹּאמַר מֶה הָיָה שֶׁהַיָּמִים הָרִאשֹׁנִים הָיוּ טוֹבִים מֵאֵלֶּה כִּי לֹא מֵחׇכְמָה שָׁאַלְתָּ עַל־זֶה׃

Don’t say, “How has it happened that former times were better than these?”

For it is not wise of you to ask that question.

Rashi and others explain this to mean we shouldn't wonder about the goodness that was bestowed upon the righteous men of yore, such as the generation of the midbar, the generation of Yehoshua, and the generation of David. For it is not out of wisdom that you ask. Everything depends upon the merit of the generations.

Ibn Ezra distills this notion into two simple words: שמח בחלקו. We are obligated to be satisfied with the lot granted us by God. We are rich when we can recognize the gifts we have been granted, and we are impoverished when we compare ourselves to previous generations. 

We need to approach life with an attitude of אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם. We have been placed in a certain time and place for a reason. We have been given the economic or family circumstances that are intended for us specifically. Unique talents and strengths have been bestowed upon us. Only in the realm of fantasy should we be comparing ourselves to the giants of long ago. We can be inspired by them, but ultimately, greatness is defined by how we respond to the challenges of our generation. Instead of romanticizing the past, why not recognize that in our times we are all playing with a Full House?