why we dont do that with baseball as well. But instead, while keeping Gehrig and Wagner on the perches, we play this game of make-believe with the math, that somehow this one game has historic yardsticks and st

SEC Player of the Week Ole Miss Sebastian SaizSaiz, a 6-foot-9, 240-pound senior forward from Madrid, Spain, averaged 19.7 points and 12.3 rebounds in wins over UMass, Oral Roberts and Saint Josephs last week. He posted a double-double with 22 points and a career-high 19 rebounds in Ole Miss thrilling comeback win over UMass. Saiz capped an 11-0 run with a game-winning put back with 3.3 seconds left. He finished a single rebound shy of becoming the first Rebel since Walter Actwood in 1975 to post a 20-point, 20-rebound game. He hauled in 11 points and added six rebounds in Ole Miss come-from-behind win over Oral Roberts in the opening round of the Paradise Jam. Saiz then recorded his 11th career double-double with a career-high 26 points and 12 rebounds in the Rebels win over Saint Josephs to advance to the Paradise Jam championship gameSEC Freshman of the Week Kentuckys Malik MonkMonk, a 6-foot-3, 200-pound guard from Lepanto, Ark., averaged 18.5 points and four rebounds in wins over 13th-ranked Michigan State and Duquesne. Monk scored a career-high 23 points, knocking down a career-high seven 3-pointers while adding a team-best six rebounds against Michigan State. Followed that up with 14 points in the win over Duquesne.Kyle Lowry Jersey . The visitors took a deserved lead in the 16th minute with midfielder Yohan Cabaye curling the ball beyond Adrian from inside the penalty area. Luis Scola Jersey . Argentina winger Ezequiel Lavezzi and France midfielder Blaise Matuidi scored, with star striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic setting up both despite having a poor game by his high standards. Forward Eduardo gave Ajaccio the lead in the sixth minute after being set up by right winger Benjamin Andre, and the Corsican side looked comfortable in the first half, with the lively Johan Cavalli causing problems with his probing runs from midfield. https://www.cheapraptors.com/343a-muggsy-bogues-jersey-raptors.html . But now that hes in the NHL, the Calgary Flames centre showed big improvement in that department by scoring the winner in the eighth round of a 5-4 shootout victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Monday. Chris Boucher Jersey . -- Yogi Ferrell orchestrates pretty much everything in Indianas offence. Doug Christie Jersey . John Tavares, Thomas Vanek and Kyle Okposo were also being counted on to slow down sizzling Rangers forward Rick Nash. That plan didnt go so well early.?Were here again. Every year or every time we get into a description of all-time greatness in the infield, we end up with two seemingly unimpeachable assertions. Lou Gehrig was and remains the greatest first baseman ever. And Honus Wagner was and remains the greatest shortstop ever.That isnt to say these havent been evaluated at length. Even if you can look past the legend of the Iron Horse, the games played streak, the martyrdom of his tragic death and the luckiest man alive speech, or the stable counterpoint he provided to the equally legendary Babe Ruth during the first half of his career, its just flat-out hard to top Gehrigs statistical legacy: .340/.447/.632, 493 homers, two MVPs and six titles, essentially crammed into just 14 years as a full-time player.Similarly, Wagner is especially problematic as targets go. If not for Bill James writing about Wagner over the years, he might be more famous for the value of his baseball card than the value of his performance. (That might still be true.) So when you have one of the co-founders of sabermetrics basically say 30 years ago, Conversation over, well, thats good enough for most people. Its tough to be you, Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith or Derek Jeter. And while Alex Rodriguez might have the numbers, narrowing the gap with 118.3 WAR to Wagners 131.0, these days the guy probably gets discounted for PEDs or time spent at the hot corner.By WAR, it looked as if Albert Pujols would catch Gehrig because of the cruising altitude he established as a Cardinal. But now Pujols is at 99.8 WAR and slowing down as an Angel, and the Iron Horse is still way out in front with 112.4. Beating Gehrig by counting stats doesnt help much: Pujols already has more hits and homers and will ultimately pass him in RBIs in another couple of seasons.For exercises like this, I doubt it matters. The numbers that support Wagner and Gehrig deserve deeper consideration if were really going to try to be fair to the present.With Wagner, youre talking about a very different game in the dead ball era, a period before you can even claim all of the best white talent in North America belonged to and played MLB-brand baseball. That game is recognizable, but different, more defense-dependent at a time when the talent pool drawn from a significantly smaller population of Americans and white immigrants.With Gehrig, you need to get into the unchanging problem of massive competitive imbalance, a product of small leagues with multiple non-competitive franchises. Lets take 1934, one of Gehrigs best seasons, as an example.Same as ever, there are just seven opposing teams. Four of them wind up with losing records, and another finishes at .500, so the Yankees have only two serious opponents. (They lose out tto the Tigers.dddddddddddd) So who was Gehrig hitting against? Not the best pitching staff in the league, because that belonged to the Yankees. Four of the top 12 ERA qualifiers were his teammates, and he doesnt have to face them. Facing the St. Louis Browns, Chicago White Sox, Philadelphia As and Washington Senators -- the losing half of the league -- Gehrig hits an incredible .376/.500/.831 in 88 of 154 games. Against the two winning teams, the ones with pitching, he slugs .462.Thats the 30s for you in a nutshell: a statistical slaughter with half the league populated by patsies and without African American and Latino players who were shut out because of their race. Now you tell me: Which pitchers are going away if the game were integrated to include black and Latin talent? Not Lou Gehrigs teammates, but a whole lot of the people Gehrig feasted on suddenly go away.The Gehrig and Wagner arguments boil down to this: Via WAR or OPS+ or your own understanding of all of the numbers we have, you have faith in our measuring their relative extraordinary superiority over their peers in smaller leagues with deliberate personnel limitations and an uneven distribution of talent. You can have that faith, and it relies on a lot of data for support -- at the same time that you turn a blind eye to whats going on in the game that creates that data. Of course, you could make the same kind of case for Randy Bass in Japan if you wanted to. Or a professional softball player moonlighting in your beer league. But why those dont work is because we dont take it on faith that those leagues are as competitive as MLB. As David Schoenfield points out, nobody would take seriously a proposition that George Mikan is still the NBAs greatest center.The question there is why we dont do that with baseball as well. But instead, while keeping Gehrig and Wagner on the perches, we play this game of make-believe with the math, that somehow this one game has historic yardsticks and standards that we should venerate to try to make an apples-to-apples comparisons of the greats from the past to the greats we see now. Were really working with apples and passion fruit.When you consider the challenges, logistical and competitive, the year-round demand on the players, the information going into the staying at the highest level, we might just want to get out of trying to force the comparisons. We know about Albert Pujols or Derek Jeter what we could never know about Gehrig or Wagner: what they could do against the best competition on the planet in the most competitive era in the games history. Lets credit them for that. 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