Diamond Mind Baseball's All Time Greatest Teams: Part One

Is this a balanced and fair selection of teams?

Diamond Mind Baseball's All Time Greatest Teams: Part One

As you might remember, we talked earlier about the original APBA “Greatest Teams of the Past” here:

It’s time to look at Diamond Mind Baseball’s version of the greatest teams of all time.

Don’t worry; we’ll go back to APBA eventually, and will go around the other games as well. It might take a while, however.

There are 8 Diamond Mind Baseball “Greatest Teams” databases. The first one appears to be a custom database originally created for a tournament that Baseball Weekly ran way back in 1993:

From Diamond Mind Baseball’s website

If anybody has original scans or pictures of that USA Today tournament, please let me know. I’d love to read it and share it, and I can’t seem to find anything online.

Without any further ado, below are the 32 teams, arranged by league.

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National League

• 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates (103-36)

• 1904 New York Giants (106-47)

• 1906 Chicago Cubs (116-36)

• 1909 Pittsburgh Pirates (110-42)

• 1912 New York Giants (103-48)

• 1923 New York Giants (95-58)

• 1931 St. Louis Cardinals (101-53)

• 1942 St. Louis Cardinals (106-48)

• 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers (105-49)

• 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers (102-60)

• 1975 Cincinnati Reds (108-54)

• 1986 New York Mets (108-54)

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American League

• 1911 Philadelphia Athletics (101-50)

• 1912 Boston Red Sox (105-47)

• 1917 Chicago White Sox (100-54)

• 1921 New York Yankees (98-55)

• 1927 New York Yankees (110-44)

• 1931 Philadelphia Athletics (107-45)

• 1932 New York Yankees (107-47)

• 1934 Detroit Tigers (101-53)

• 1936 New York Yankees (102-51)

• 1939 New York Yankees (106-45)

• 1942 New York Yankees (103-51)

• 1946 Boston Red Sox (104-50)

• 1953 New York Yankees (99-52)

• 1954 Cleveland Indians (111-43)

• 1961 New York Yankees (109-53)

• 1968 Detroit Tigers (103-59)

• 1969 Baltimore Orioles (109-53)

• 1977 New York Yankees (100-62)

• 1984 Detroit Tigers (104-58)

• 1988 Oakland Athletics (104-58)

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Analysis

Well, I sure hope you like the Yankees!

There’s a bit of an overkill factor here. Do we really need 3 different Yankees teams in a 7 year period?

We’ve also got no fewer than 14 New York City teams represented (including Brooklyn). That means that almost half of the teams in this replay were from New York.

There’s a clear imbalance between the leagues. We’ve got 12 National League teams and 20 American League teams. Seems like a bias to me.

There are good things here, though. For example, check out the number of teams per decade, for example:

• 1900s: 4

• 1910s: 4

• 1920s: 3

• 1930s: 6

• 1940s: 3

• 1950s: 3

• 1960s: 3

• 1970s: 3

• 1980s: 3

With the exception of the 1930s, this is pretty well balanced.

You’re also missing some of the “fun” teams that J. Richard Seitz made sure to include. Diamond Mind went for the 1931 Cardinals instead of the 1934 Cardinals, for example. The 1909 Tigers are completely missing, meaning that Ty Cobb doesn’t get to participate in the project. Boston Red Sox fans will feel frustrated that their 1975, 1978, and 1986 teams all missed out — especially when they realize that the Yankees received 3 teams from the 1930s, and that even the 1934 Tigers were included.

I know you’re not going to make everybody happy. However, there really are some questions about why some of these teams were included and why others were not.

I’d love to know what you guys think, and have opened up this post to comments from everybody.