And his whole career was pre-steroids, so his numbers if normalized for the mid-late '90s would look amazing.

This is also not entirely true.  There are plenty of available normalized numbers.  Mattingly's career best single-season OPS+ was 161.  Albert Pujols beat that 7 times in 8 years from 2003-2010.  Miggy's now beaten it 5 of the last 6 years.  Thome beat it 3 times in full seasons.  Prince Fielder beat it twice.  McGwire did it 8 times, Bagwell 4, Helton 3, Giambi beat it 3 and equalled it once.  Votto beat it twice, though one would be a bit of a stretch to call a full season.  And that's just first basemen who've played since Mattingly that I can think of off the top of my head, who were not just better than him in terms of raw numbers, but compared to their contemporaries.  If you count Frank Thomas as a 1B, he did it 7 years in a row plus one additional time.

C: Bench
1B: Pujols
2B: Biggio
SS: Ozzie
3B: Rose
LF: Brock
CF: Andruw Jones
RF: Reggie Smith
SP: Gibson
RP: Lee Smith
DH: Ortiz

this is of course the saw them play in person lineup and based on their career stats

when I was 10 (I think) my uncle took my Dad and me to a Dodger game. This would have been 1964 if I'm correct about my age.

I saw Koufax pitch a 4 hit shutout against the Cardinals and Bob Gibson.

I'm to lazy (busy) to post the lineup. I remember the Dodger lineup pretty well, the Cardinals I'd actually have to look up.

Are you sure it wasn't against this start against Ernie Broglio?

I'm never one to argue with the facts and memory being what it is...........................

I remember it as a 4 - 0 (4 hit) shutout.  With Gibson going for the Cards.   But the boxscore you referred me to is sure close, so..............

In answer to your question I guess I's say no.

But,  Is there a 4 - 0 Dodger win over the Cards in either 63, 65, or 66, (or another game in '64)???
because I could be just as wrong about my age at the time.

Probably more likely to misstate my age than the score, really. look for a 4 - 0 Koufax shutout over the Cards.

LB

I think it was July 3, 1963 and the score was 5 - 0 not 4 - 0.  Now I'm gonna have to check with my sister and see if I can figure it out.  Dodger stadium sure was beautiful I remember that. It was my very 1st major league game.

well memories being what they are it sounds like a awesome first game to go

The question was who were the best players you saw at each position. I agree that Frank Thomas was a great player. Watching exclusively AL baseball and then moving to Italy, I hardly ever saw Pujols play. I saw Frank Thomas, he was excellent. I saw Mattingly play every day for years and he was amazing. You have seen better? Great, put them on your list. Why attack the best players I ever saw and why am I not supposed to have a favorite player that is my favorite player? 

 

Never did understand the whole Mattingly fascination.  Damn good ballplayer, sure, but he just doesn't measure up to any list of all-time greats.  He just doesn't.

Not quite great enough for not nearly long enough.

look at his stats in the first 6 years he was AWESOME injuries cut his abilities dramatically  never was a yankee fan but you have to admire dominance when you see it. those first years gave him reverence for the rest of his career

I think Mattingly is a great guy to have as a favorite player.  He was the kind of player you want to be great - great guy, great teammate, great role model.  But he's pretty much always going to be a stretch for BEST.

Once again - and thanks riji4191 for your comment - this thread is not "who were the greatest players ever at each position" or I would have put Gehrig at first, and some of the people mentioned would be in the top ten. 

This was "who was the best you saw". I saw Willie Mays play. But he was old then. But as all time greats I am sure he was the best I ever saw along with Henry Aaron. But I did not see either really in their prime, and never saw Mickey Mantle play except in person when he hit a home run off Whitey Ford in an old timers game at Yankees Stadium. 

So I put the players who were the best that I really saw. Of the people others have mentioned at first base as being better than Mattingly, and as riji4191 points out, this is a question of "were they better than Mattingly before his back injury" not after, and some of them probably were, though I did not see that. Frank Thomas, who was always popular in our house (my mom liked him) was a great player, right up there. I would take Mattingly. But I would necessarily say he was the better of the two, certainly career-wise. But I think in his best years he was likely the best player in baseball and the players voted him that for 3 years running if I remember correctly. 

Bill James lists Mattingly as 12th all time at First Base in his New Historical Baseball Abstract. After: 

1. Gehrig
2 Foxx
3. McGwire (has anyone listed him?)
4. Bagwell
5. Eddie Murray
6. Johnny Mize
7. Harmon Killebrew (a 3B in my view)
8. Hank Greenberg
9. Willie McCovey (whom I did see and yes, in his prime and this is a player that perhaps should rank higher or as high as Mattingly that I saw)
10. Frank Thomas
11. Cap Anson
12. Don Mattingly 
13. Tony Perez

for you Keith Hernandez fans, he is listed as 16th all time by Bill James.  By my count, excluding Killebrew who played 3B more than not, Mattingly is listed by James as the 5th best living First Baseman. 

Posted by nockahoma on 7/6/2015 12:18:00 PM (view original):
C - John Bench
1B - Donnie Baseball
2B - Rod Carew
SS - Ozzie Smith
3B - Michael Jack
OF - Junior
OF - Hammerin' (saw him at the tail end of his career)
OF - Say Hey (same as Hammerin')
Rotation: Seaver, Unit, Maddux & Pedro
Closers: Goose then Mariano

These are guys I actually 'saw'. Live. In person(so to speak). I was fortunate enough to be able to go to both Shea and Yankee Stadiums as a kid growing up.

So this is a list of players I actually witnessed, with my rear in a seat in the stadium.

Sorry if Donnie Baseball isn't your favorite, but he was the best I 'saw' (and I saw Hernandez plenty, too)

Saw Kid regularly, but Bench was the best 'I saw'

I'm surprised no one has jumped all over the Carew selection, as well.
a few more solid seasons & Andy Simmons might eclipse the Wizard...


There were better players who have played at their respective position in my lifetime(b.1969) but I may not have 'seen' them live - on TV, yes - but wasn't in a stadium when they played.


that was my understanding of the question & it's how I replied

The last Abstract was from 2001.  I would say that Pujols at this point has unambiguously passed Perez, Mattingly, and Anson at least.  After that things become debatable.  Personally I never bought into Mize being ranked so highly, but certainly Bill James would know better than I do...

Wow, I certainly didn't mean to cause such a brouhaha when I posted in support of pinotfan's comment.

Certainly, no one can argue with anyone's right to evaluate players as they choose, and if the question is (very very narrowly) defined to mean only players you actually saw in person at a major league game, then hey, Mattingly could well be the best.  But (a) I don't think that's how the question was intended and (b) if it was intended that way, it's not very interesting.  If the only game I ever saw live was a Red Sox game from 1990, would I be justified in saying Carlos Quintana (Q!) was the best 1B?

I also hope no one seriously thinks my evaluation of Mattingly is in any way colored by anti-Yankees bias.  Hey, I love to hate the Bombers, as any Red Sox fan does, but my list of greatest of all time would include, at minimum, 3 Yankees:
1B: Gehrig
RF: Ruth
Closer: Mo

And probably Mantle (over Mays, Griffey, Cobb, etc) in CF.  Joe D is up there too.

Berra might make the nod at catcher too.  Jeter is probably top 5 all time at SS.  

And on the list of people who played the game the way I would want my kids to play it, the Yankees have a lot of names at the top of that list too: Joe D, Jeter, Bernie Williams, Willie Randolph, Roy White... heck I loved the way Joe Girardi played the game....

For what it's worth, here's how I see Mattingly, since my original post was terse:

Great in 1984-86 (more on those seasons in a second)
Very good (but definitely not great) in 87-89
Pedestrian, right around league average for 1B in 83, and 91-94.
Below average, maybe worse, in 1990 and 1995.

His best season, ranked by WAR (using baseball-reference.com, which credits Mattingly for his defense AND the context of the era in which he played, i.e. pre-steroid), is 7.2 WAR.  That's a terrific season.  It's not one of the 500 best seasons in baseball history.  (B-R.com lists the top 500, which gets us down to 8.3 WAR).

Mattingly's career WAR is 42.2.  That's a very good figure.  Well below the level of a hall of famer, but very good.

Just looking at 1B whose careers mostly occurred since 1980, I find the following:
Pujols 99.4 (including 8 seasons better than Mattingly's best)
Bagwell 79.6 (4 seasons better than Mattingly's best)
Big Hurt 73.7 
Thome 72.9 (Why hasn't his name come up in this discussion?  Thome should be a no-doubt hall of famer.)
Palmeiro 71.6
Murray 68.3
Cabrera 63.5
McGwire 62 (I agree with italyprof, his name should have been included here too)
Helton 61.2
Hernandez 60
Olerud 58 (THERE's a guy who is underrated...his 1993 and 1998 seasons were arguably better than Mattingly's best, and he sustained a high level of play for a lot longer, with a significant physical impediment)
Will Clark 56.2
Jack Clark 52.8
McGriff 52.4
Teixeira 51.3
Giambi 50.4
Grace 46.1


I'll stop there...and I may have a missed a few.  

I certainly don't think WAR is the be all and end all, by any means.  But the ground between Mattingly and these guys is enormous, and remember WAR gives Mattingly credit for his defense, and his era.  I just don't think he's in the conversation.  If you want to say, who might have been the best, since 1980, if he had stayed healthy and somehow been able to maintain a career-worth of performance like he had in his 3 best years, then sure, he's in that conversation.  But that argument can be played too many ways and with too many different players.  I don't give credit for what a player might have done.  I give him credit for what he did, whatever his circumstance.  In terms of what 1B have been the greatest of the past 3-4 decades, I think you have to pick from the list above.