As of the 2022 season, there are eight members of MLB’s exclusive 300-300 club, i.e. 300 career home runs and 300 career stolen bases. The first six names are highly recognizable stars of yesteryear: Willie Mays, Barry and Bobby Bonds, Andre Dawson, Alex Rodriguez, and Carlos Beltran. However, the last couple of names may be a bit of a surprise to the average baseball fan – Steve Finley and Reggie Sanders. Though never quite superstars, both were consistent and versatile players, the type of productive veteran every winning team needs; in comparing and contrasting the duo, this leads to a natural question:
In recent years, the NFL has seen its share of star players who also excelled in basketball at the college level (e.g. Donovan McNabb and Terrell Owens), perhaps most notably at the tight end position (think Tony Gonzalez, Antonio Gates, Jimmy Graham, etc.). On the defensive side of the ball, a couple of dual-sport standouts who spent their Sundays terrorizing opposing quarterbacks were defensive ends Julius Peppers and Jason Taylor – both long and lanky with great athleticism, they were two of the best pass-rushers of the 21st century and each accumulated well over 100 career sacks, thus making for an apt comparison:
Today’s NBA game is all about versatility, making players who can do it all (score, rebound, pass, defend, etc.) valuable commodities in this new era of positionless basketball. A generation earlier, two stars who fit this mold at the forward position were Shawn Marion and Rasheed Wallace – despite very different personalities and temperaments, each was a highly productive player on both ends of the court for some championship-contending teams; as perhaps borderline Hall of Fame-type players from the 2000s, let us compare this duo and pose the question:
In baseball’s long and storied history, there are numerous examples of brothers who excelled at the MLB level, e.g. Paul and Lloyd Waner, the DiMaggios, the Alous, the Alomars, etc. From the pitching side of things, the winningest brothers in MLB history are Phil and Joe Niekro (539 combined wins), followed closely by Gaylord and Jim Perry (529 wins); no other pair of brothers has even surpassed 400 total wins. Among these standout siblings, Phil Niekro and Gaylord Perry were the more illustrious half of each pairing – with 5,000+ career innings pitched, 300+ wins, and 3,000+ strikeouts apiece, each hurler spent more than two decades in MLB and was among the greatest workhorses of the 1960s and 1970s; these parallels thus make for an interesting comparison:
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Islanders had their most successful stretches in franchise history, each winning multiple consecutive Stanley Cup titles (2x for the Flyers, 4x for the Islanders). At the forefront of these championship teams were dominant two-way centers in Bobby Clarke (Philadelphia) and Bryan Trottier (New York) – both perennial MVP candidates in their prime who scored 1,000+ career points and hold a number of franchise records, each can also stake a claim to being the best players in team history, thus bringing up an interesting debate:
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