So Who Really WAS the Greatest Yankee Left Fielder of All Time?

 

Well, it's complicated.

As previously discussed in the comments section, I love Roy White to death, and he was certainly an outstanding player, who took a lot of HIGHLY undeserved flak during his 15 seasons with the team. 

Yet the truth is, the Yanks have enjoyed many years with better all-around players out there. Rickey Henderson, Charlie "King Kong" Keller, Dave Winfield, Hideki Matsui, and Gene Woodling all come to mind. And don't get me started on Twinkletoes Selkirk.

Only trouble? For various reasons, none of them played enough games in left to really qualify as the greatest of all time. 

Keller, with six seasons, had the longest stay, and he was a near-HOF player at his peak. But a terrible injury left him a shell of his former self by the time he was 29.

So, who is the man?

Actually, it's men, plural. And this is not an attempt to start still another gender.

The best Yankee left fielder of all time was BabeRuthBobMeusel. Or call him BabeBob, or Bobby Baby, as a tribute to the late, great Stephen Sondheim. Or maybe MeuselRuth.

Whatever. Point is, for ten seasons, 1921-1930, The Babe and The Bob—pictured here in their off-season garb as Wall Street bicycle messengers—split the position. 

The way this worked was that, basically, Ruth played left field except when he didn't wanna. Usually when the sun was too intense, always a problem when you have consumed 714 beers the night before.

Ruth would then shift over to right, and Meusel would take over in left—though this was not necessarily the optimum lineup for your New York Yankees.

Ruth was considered to have an outstanding arm, and was said never to have thrown to the wrong base. But Bob Meusel was widely believed to possess the best outfield arm in the game.

The two men—seen here in some of the stylish warm-up gear from the time—would often entertain fans before games by placing a towel over home plate, then having a contest to see how many times each could hit it with a throw from their respective outfield positions.

(I know, I know: I should have posted a trigger warning over the idea that two ballplayers would voluntarily do anything to entertain fans. Hey, it was a different era.)

"Long Bob" Meusel, a key link on "Murderers' Row," is mostly forgotten now—probably in good part because he was known as a moody, quiet player on a team full of boisterous characters. (He was also known as "Languid Bob" or even "Silent Bob," decades before Kevin Smith.)

Languid or not, though, Bob was a superb ballplayer. He not only played a great corner outfield, but stole as many as 26 bases in a season, regularly pounded 40 or more doubles and 10 or more triples around the yard, and had an MVP-quality season in 1925, when he led the AL with 33 homers and 134 ribbies, despite The Babe being sidelined for a good part of the season with his mysterious stomach explosion.

He's seen here with his brother, Emil "Irish" Meusel, who played six years with the New York Giants. During that time, the brothers shared a house in New York, and played against each other in three World Series. 

Both lasted a total of 11 seasons in the bigs. Bob hit .309, Irish, .310—though Bob led in almost every other statistical category (.847-.810 in OPS). Supposedly, Emil was just as quiet as his brother, and one can picture the fun times they had around the old manse.

(We are an odd lot, we Irish.)

All in all, Long Silent Languid Bob played 625 games in left for the Yankees, and would have been a constant all-star, had they had all-star games in his time. 

On the other hand, Babe Ruth, the greatest player who ever lived, played 868 games in left for the Yankees. But to name him the Yanks' all-time greatest left fielder would mean that Ruth was the team's greatest left field AND right fielder.

So what to do? 

Frankly, I suspect that if you just pushed Ruth, Mickey Mantle, and Joe, Joe DiMaggio out of your dugout, and told them "You boys sort it out," you'd be fine. At least until Aaron Judge puts in a couple more years.

But if we have to go with one, full-time guy who actually played a lot of years out there—I gotta go with Languid Bob Meusel. Or Babe Ruth. Or both—depicted below with the third great in that incredible, 1920s outfield, centerfielder Earle the Pearl Combs. But I digress.