How Good Was Mickey Kaline at Baseball?
Photo: heyarnold.fandom.com
Yesterday MLB.com’s Cut4 site published an article with the title, “Mickey Kaline is Actually the Best Baseball Player of All Time.” If you consider yourself a huge baseball fan and don’t know who Mickey Kaline is, it’s ok…that’s because he is a fictional character on the cartoon “Hey Arnold.” Unlike most kids, I didn’t watch many cartoons growing up, but I loved Hey Arnold. So I was intrigued by the article and enjoyed reading it. I also wanted to give my take on a small aspect of the episode that always bothered me.
In the episode, which is titled “The Baseball,” Mickey Kaline is portrayed as a larger than life baseball figure who is Arnold’s hero. He plays neighborhood baseball pretending to be like him, knows all his stats, and watches all of his games. In the cartoon, Kaline was painted as arguably the best baseball player of all-time. The thing that’s always bothered me is the moment Arnold starts rattling off Kaline’s baseball stats to his friends, he states he has a career batting average of .299. Even as a kid watching this episode, I knew that a career average of .299 was nothing that special. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very good, but it doesn’t match up to the “best ever” status that Kaline was created to hold. In response to the article and my interest in the show, I decided to do a little research and see just how good of a baseball player Mickey Kaline was.
Let’s start with the batting average. In the episode, it showed Kaline’s final game of his career after a surprise retirement announcement. It was at the same time when Arnold reported that Kaline’s career average was .299. Finishing with that average would put him tied for 204th on the all-time batting average list; he would be tied with Michael Young, who retired after 2013. That would also put him behind John Kruk. While I’m not disrespecting Kruk one bit, he doesn’t quite fit under legendary status, though he might be considered one in Philly for his abilities and character. For relatability, current players who are hitting higher than Kaline did are Dustin Pedroia, Albert Pujols, Charlie Blackmon, Robinson Cano, Buster Posey, Mike Trout, Joey Votto, Ichiro Suzuki, Jose Altuve, and Miguel Cabrera.
Photo: heyarnold.fandom.com
Let’s move to home runs next. Arnold reported Kaline had 533 career home runs before he would go on to hit one in his final at-bat later in the episode, giving him a total of 534. There’s absolutely no doubt that this number is really impressive. 534 home runs would place him 19th on the all-time list, tied with Jimmie Foxx. For relatability in this category, that puts him seven home runs behind recently retired David Ortiz. When you factor in batting average, only six of those 19 players have averages higher than Kaline’s at .299. Those players are Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Albert Pujols, Manny Ramirez, and Jimmie Foxx.
Next is the most impressive aspect of Kaline’s career: the longevity of it. In the episode, Mickey Kaline tells Arnold that he once faced legendary pitcher Bob Gibson in the World Series. Gibson played in three World Series, the last one being in 1968. Kaline retired in 1996 (when the episode aired and took place). If he was a rookie during the ’68 World Series, that would have given him a career of 29 years in the major leagues at his time of retirement. Playing 20 years is considered a long career, so adding nine more is a ridiculous number. It would also give him the record over Nolan Ryan who put in 27 years in the majors. While it is impressive to be consistent enough to hit .299 over that long of a period, it does water down his home run numbers, giving him an average of just 18 per season…which is still very good, but doesn’t make him seem as much of a home run king as before.
To sum it all up, it’s safe to say that Mickey Kaline was a first ballot Hall of Famer. Just getting in the 500 home run club alone almost does enough for any player to enter the Hall of Fame, barring any suspicions or evidence of cheating the game or betting on it. 534 career home runs to go along with a .299 average puts him in the top-15 hitters of all time category, but isn’t enough to consider him the greatest player of all-time, as Cut4 suggested. He is definitely still a baseball legend, though. Aside from the 29-year career, the player who Mickey Kaline is most comparable to throughout history: Mickey Mantle, who posted a career average of .298 with 536 home runs. Is it a coincidence that Kaline is also named “Mickey?” I think not.
*Note*
I give credit for writing this to MLB Cut4, who brought up a fascinating idea yesterday with their article on the Hey Arnold character. I wrote this not as a serious argumentative response, but instead as a lighthearted take on what was one of my favorite episodes from my favorite cartoon. I understand their claim of him being the greatest player of all-time was in fun, just as my take on it was (for those people who don’t tend to recognize these things).
Garett
Credit: https://heyarnold.fandom.com/wiki/Mickey_Kaline
https://www.mlb.com/cut4/the-greatest-baseball-player-was-mickey-kaline