Johnny Bench

But it's what makes baseball so much damn fun.

Having said that, treating the Negro Leagues like some kind of minor league is not realistic.  If you look at what the best of the Negro Leagues did to Major League Baseball in the '50s and '60s, there is no way you can say those people were playing against inferior competition.

I think it makes just as much sense to rate Gibson higher than Bench as it does to rate Bench over Gibson.  Which, by the way, is no sense at all.

Assume Berra and Bench a pretty tight match as hitters. They're awfully close on the surface, when all is said and done. But you would have to stretch the evidence a little bit, considering Berra was more run productive, while striking out far less often and killing fewer rallies with double plays than Bench. (Where on earth would anyone get the idea that a man who drove in more runs in fewer games, produced 14 more runs per 162 games lifetime, and is credited with creating almost half a run more per 27 outs---while hitting into 55 fewer double plays---which is exactly what Yogi Berra did over Johnny Bench, is not the superior hitter, clutch or otherwise?)

Assume, too, that Berra and Bench are near equals as defencive catchers. Well, actually, they aren't---and the nickel goes to Yogi.

a) He led his league in his position's defencive stats more often than Bench did.

b) Berra's range factor is higher above his league's than Bench's is above his.

c) Berra turned, in 43 less games behind the plate, 18 more defencive double plays.

Bench probably threw out more baserunners than Berra, but the running game was only coming back to baseball life midway through Yogi's life as a regular backstop; it was well enough re-established and active by the time Bench had made his bones. Johnny Bench had far more opportunities to throw out enemy baserunners.

Both men were deadly enough in the World Series; you could probably make a case that, had he been given as many Series in which to play as Berra, Bench might have approached Yogi's productivity. In fourteen Series Berra reached base a little more often than Bench and used up a few less outs to get there, and while Bench outslugged him by a reasonable margin, Berra did hit twelve World Series homers and drive in 39 World Series runs (including ten in the 1956 Series alone), but if you could get Bench into even six more Series than he got into, he'd probably be in Yogi's neighbourhood, and probably in the house next door.

Everybody with me? Good. Now: For all we speak of what it is a catcher does or does not do, it is rarely enough bespoken that one of his primary pieces of business---maybe the first and most important piece of business he has---is to handle a pitching staff. I've looked it up, to see for myself, after reading Allen Barra's very convincing argument in Brushbacks and Knockdowns---and I think, on the evidence available, that no catcher in baseball history ever made for more winning pitching staffs, whose members had a) not otherwise been winners on other clubs, or b) won to far higher percentages than with other catchers, than did Yogi Berra.

In a way, it's almost unfair to Johnny Bench. He came up with a club which bedeviled by a) near chronic arm trouble, or, b) deep enough seasoning (think Bob Purkey pre-Bench and Tom Seaver as Bench approached the beginning of his career sunset) or too-poor seasoning (think Joey Jay, pre-Bench, a good but undercooked commodity before the Reds acquired him for 1961; his acquisition basically made the 1961 pennant possible, and Jay  rolled up back-to-back 22-win seasons before hitting his very steep downslope) by the time they became Reds. Bench handled a couple of pitchers who did better with him as their catcher than with others, but not as many as Berra handled. Seaver aside, the best pitcher Bench handled was probably Jim Maloney---whose best seasons rolled up right before Bench came up, anyway---on yet another series of Cincinnati teams who could pound the living daylights out of the ball but who didn't pitch up to their offence. (One of these years, it might make for a fascinating analysis as to just why it was that the Reds from the 1960s through the 1990s developed so many pitchers---Gary Nolan, Mel Queen, Don Gullett and company---whose careers were compromised by so much arm trouble.)

Damn near every Yankee pitcher who had Yogi Berra as his catcher (and who wasn't named Whitey Ford) had a) a far better record than he had with any other catcher in their careers, or b) a winning record with Yogi and an even or losing record with anyone else. And the Yankees ran through an awful lot of pitchers in the Stengel years, homegrown and acquired (some familiar names: Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat, Vic Raschi, Johnny Sain, Don Larsen, Bob Turley, Jim Konstanty, Ewell Blackwell, Bobby Shantz, and Tommy Byrne). AAs perverse as it might sound to the naked ear, the Yankees had what Barra ascribed: the best pitching in the 1950s American League without having the best pitchers, Ford aside. Sounds to me like an impeccable argument (in hand with Stengel being only half kidding when he frequently called Berra "my assistant manager") for ninety percent of the game being mental over the other half being physical, if you ask me.

No catcher in major league history---not Bench (who also had one Hall of Famer to work with in his career, Tom Seaver, who was already the best pitcher in baseball for several years before Bench got to work with him), not Roy Campanella, not Bill Dickey, not Mickey Cochrane, not Ivan Rodriguez, not Mike Piazza, not even Gary Carter or Carlton Fisk---has that extensive a resume of improved pitching staffs.

If you had to build a team you could win with, you'd be hauled off to the rubber room for not naming Berra and Bench as your catching staff. Johnny Bench is the greatest catcher who ever played the game . . . among those not named Yogi Berra.