All-Time Sox First Basemen
If you can’t come up with your own ideas, I say it is a writer’s moral imperative to steal them. Which is what I’m doing here.
I’m running with Jimmy’s ranks of the middle infielders that have graced the Sox with their baseballing to include the other positions. If you haven’t read them, you can read his original post on second basemen here and on shortstops here.
I do have some criteria though.
1. I only count a player’s career with the Red Sox
2. They need at least 1000 PA’s
3. I count their entire Sox career, even if they spent a significant amount of time at another position (See Pete Runnels)
That’s all…so let me take you on the ride of mediocrity that is the men that have played the first sack for the Boston Red Sox.
5. George Scott
Some people will probably think this is too low. If anything, I think it might be too high, and I’ll worry more about Scott being ranked over Brian Daubach, Cecil Cooper or Walt Dropo than anything else on the list. Scott’s a lovable guy, and he has a healthy amount of nostalgia attached to him, with his taters, goofy weight gain/weight loss stories, and being the first baseman of the most important Red Sox team ever. But when he was with the Sox, he just wasn’t a good enough hitter to merit being ranked any higher. And the only thing that makes him rate as high as he does is that he was a terrific glove man (anecdotally…I’m only 26).
The case for Boomer is simple…he was a Red Sox for more games than anyone else on the list (150 more games played than Mo Vaughn), he was one of the best fielding regular first basemen to play for Boston, and he was a part of the 67 and 78 Sox teams. The points against are mostly centered around when he almost ate himself out of the league in 1968-1969 and chewed up 1004 plate appearances hitting .221/.294/.334. As a first baseman. I know it was the 60’s, but come on…Dave Stapleton would blush at that. He was also fairly bad when he came back to Boston for Coop, but by then he wasn’t battling weight problems…he was fat. And in his 30’s. His longevity won me over though.
4. Kevin Millar
He’s on the left.
Why? I didn’t particularly like the Millar sideshow. One man’s ‘keeping the clubhouse loose’ is another man’s ‘really goddamn annoying.’ For all his talk about being an asset in the club house, he sure did bitch a lot, from El Bencho to the stories about him in Seth Mnookin’s Feeding the Monster. Also, he completely failed to keep Manny Ramirez in check, which was pretty much one of the things he tauted about himself.
However, he did hit .282/.362/.451 when he was in Boston, and played first base more compitently than some of the other hitters on the list, like Dick Stuart, Dick Gernert, and all the other hitters that have stood around first base for Boston. He was only around for three seasons, but he notched almost 1800 plate appearances, which is a notch below the lifers like Scott, Vaughn and Phil Todt. And there was that World Series thing. Like it or not, Millar will be tattooed into the psyche of the Sox fan, at least for the next 20-30 years.
3. Mike Stanley
Stanley was kind of the opposite of the two men above (and the two below) because he was very quiet, and went about his job as a baseball player. He didn’t really have a position, spending most of his career as a catcher and finally floated up the line to first because he couldn’t really catch. He did receive Nolan Ryan’s final no-hitter with the Rangers.
A quick Stanley story, because he is a pretty boring topic to write about. In 2000, in May, I went to a Red Sox/Royals game and had some pretty great seats down the first base line. When I was waiting for my friend to get to the seats, a middle aged guy brought his toddler kid to the edge of the field where Stanley walked over (apparently, he knew the guy). They are chatting when Dan Reichart was walking in from right field and a ball rolled passed him. The kids (the ones that always beg for balls) were yelling at him, and he faked like he was tossing too them and laughed at them. Stanley walked over to him, told him to grow up, and then tossed a few baseballs he had in his back pocket to the kids. I thought that was pretty cool of him.
2. Mo Vaughn
When I was growing up, we went to a lot of PawSox games, so I saw Mo quite a bit before he was an established major leaguer. Down on the farm, he was completely larger than life. His at bats were palpable…almost like the same way there is a buzz in Fenway when the Sox are down one in the 9th, with a guy on second, and David Ortiz coming up to the plate. Only mix in the normal family-friendly little league style-chants that used to permeate McCoy.
Anyway, Vaughn is simply the best choice to be the second on the list…every meaningful number has him ranked second. He wasn’t a good fielder, and he was a disaster as a baserunner (save that year he stole 11 bases) but he was an early model Ortiz (or a late model Scott…but he was a much better hitter than Scott ever was). Because the guys that play first tend to be colorful anyway, there is a fair amount of baggage associated with Mo, between the contract he signed with the Angels, to the injuries, to replacing rehab with McDonalds, and the penchant for strippers. But man, could he hit.
1. Jimmie Foxx
Not terribly surprising since Double X is one of the best first basemen in baseball history. XX didn’t even have his best years in Boston (those were in Philly), but he is still head and shoulders above the field for the Sox. There is a ton of folklore that followed Foxx around, mostly centering around his strength and his drinking…Bill James has a particularly good apocryphal tale about Foxx in his New Historical Abstracts.
I know I said I would only count the Red Sox portion of a player’s career towards these rankings, but holy crap I would be doing you a disservice if I didn’t mention his 1932 with the A’s. Against a league/park adjusted line of .290/.361/.426, XX hit .364/.469/.749. And he was almost just as good the next year. And he was half in the bag too! While it’s probably good that baseball players are tending to take their health a little more seriously now (save PEDs), it sure is less interesting to hear about.
Gotta love Mo, representing Providence.
I was bummed when Stanley quit as bench coach. Wonder what he’s up to now.