So you were probably wondering who the most popular player is on eBay. I was too, so I checked. I did a simple name search using the Top 25 all-time leaders in WAR.* The results will not astound you. For the most part, it pays to have played in the card era. Among the prewar players, only Babe Ruth places on the higher end of the list and poor Kid Nichols, who played the majority of his career in the 19th Century (that’s the one in which they invented the telephone), barely registers at all.
Who’s generated the most stuff?
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Mickey Mantle (seen here in his high school yearbook) continues to fascinate the boomer generation, it seems. He’ll slip down this list when the boomers start going to that great rec room in the sky. On the other hand, does a player have to be loved to place high on this list? After all, nobody seems to like Alex Rodriguez, and he’s second; and Barry Bonds has never warmed the cockles of many hearts.
Something tells me this issue is far more complicated than I’m letting on.
29,369 Mickey Mantle
25,969 Alex Rodriguez
24,304 Barry Bonds
19,756 Babe Ruth
16,474 Roger Clemens
16,437 Ted Williams
14,746 Willie Mays
14,448 Hank Aaron
12,433 Greg Maddux
11,102 Tom Seaver
9,023 Frank Robinson
8,026 Stan Musial
7,887 Rickey Henderson
7,510 Lou Gehrig
5,374 Ty Cobb
3,446 Cy Young**
2,696 Walter Johnson
2,394 Honus Wagner
1,757 Mel Ott
1,712 Rogers Hornsby
1,272 Tris Speaker
818 Eddie Collins
508 Nap Lajoie
500 Pete Alexander***
132 Kid Nichols
*I realize this excludes Cal Ripken, Jr., who registers even more items than Mantle.
**number inflated by references to award named in his honor
***approximate; includes searches for Pete, Grover and Grover Cleveland
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