By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer
It’s Father's Day, so let’s talk about some baseball dads. No, I’m not talking about baseball players who exude big dad energy such as Jay Bruce or Curtis Granderson. I’m talking about actual fathers and sons who played in Major League Baseball.
Like anything between father and son, this is going to be a competition. Personally, I’ll never forget the first time I beat my dad in one-on-one or the first time I threw a pitch too hard for him to handle. Now imagine that same scenario, except dad is a major leaguer. So many baseball sons grew up trying to match the accomplishments of their fathers, and now we’re going to see how they did.
I hit the books, did my research and put together a roster of MLB dads and a roster of MLB kids. The only rule to qualify as a dad was that your son appeared in the majors, and the only rule as a son was that your dad appeared in the majors. Pretty simple.
I’m sure some of you will disagree with my roster construction choices (WHERE’S TIM RAINES?), so sorry about that. But now it's time to decide which lineup is better.
Let’s hop right in and go position by position.
CATCHER
Sons: Sandy Alomar Jr., 20-year career, six-time All-Star, 1990 Rookie of the Year
Fathers: Ivan Rodriguez, 21-year career, 14-time All-Star, 13-time Gold Glover, 1999 AL MVP, Hall of Famer
With all due respect to Alomar Jr., this one isn’t a conversation. Pudge is undeniably on the short list for Greatest Catcher Of All Time and is, at least in my opinion, the best defensive backstop the game has ever seen. There’s a reason all catchers nowadays are compared to this dude. Thirteen Gold Glove Awards is just a stupid number.
Advantage: Fathers
FIRST BASE
Sons: Cody Bellinger, 2017 Rookie of the Year, 2019 NL MVP, two-time All-Star, 2018 NLCS MVP
Fathers: Tony Pérez, seven-time All-Star, All-Star Game MVP, 54 career WAR, 379 career home runs, Hall of Famer
Bellinger has had an unreal start to his big-league career and has already crushed 124 homers, even though he’s still only 25 years old. If you had to put money on anyone catching the uncatchable home run record, you’d probably pick Cody or Vlad Jr.
But unfortunately for Team Kids, I’m giving Pérez the win in this matchup. Over a 23-year career, the Cuban first baseman made seven All-Star Games, won two titles with the Big Red Machine and tallied 2,732 career hits, all of which earned him entry into Cooperstown. Bellinger is rad as hell, but when in doubt, you have to side with a guy in the Hall of Fame.
Advantage: Fathers
SECOND BASE
Sons: Robinson Canó, eight-time All-Star, 334 career homers, 69.5 career WAR
Fathers: Craig Biggio, seven-time All-Star, 3,060 career hits, 65.4 career WAR, Hall of Famer
This is probably the closest matchup we have. Both guys are within 5.0 WAR of each other, though Canó is slightly ahead. Biggio was probably a better and more versatile defender, while Canó had more power and a sweeter swing at the dish. Biggio made seven All-Star Games and Canó eight. Both have five silver sluggers.
They are two of the modern era’s best second basemen, but they reached that lofty status with drastically different styles of play. I’m not a big Moral High Horse About Steroids Guy, but Canó got popped twice in an age after regular testing got implemented. If we’re comparing two super similar statistical résumés, I’m tempted to lean toward Biggio, even though Robbie at his peak was one of the most delightfully entertaining ballplayers ever.
Advantage: Fathers
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THIRD BASE
Sons: Cal Ripken Jr., 1983 and 1991 AL MVP, 1982 ROY, 95.9 career bRef WAR, 19-time All-Star, Hall of Famer, greatest Oriole of all time
Fathers: Pete Rose, all-time MLB hits leader, 17-time All-Star, 1963 Rookie of the Year, 1973 NL MVP, 79.6 career bRef WAR, banned from baseball
There are 36 combined All-Star Games in this showdown. That's just absurd. Even though Rose has more hits than anyone else in baseball history, Ripken is the clear and obvious selection here for me, an Orioles fan. Rose might have compiled more stats in some categories, but when you look at the whole résumé, it’s Ripken 10 times out of 10.
Sometimes people forget that Ripken was way more than the consecutive games played record (did I mention that I was born the day Ripken tied Gehrig?). At his peak, Ripken was the first modern infielder, a tall, sinewy and ridiculously athletic superfreak who could drop taters like a muscled-out first baseman. Although he moved to third only in the latter part of his career, that qualifies for our little experiment here. The Sons are on the board.
Advantage: Sons
SHORTSTOP
Sons: Fernando Tatis Jr., one-time Silver Slugger, inevitable 2021 All-Star, current face of baseball
Fathers: Maury Wills, seven-time All-Star, 1962 NL MVP, 586 career steals (20th all time)
If you have a phone and internet connection, you know who Fernando Tatis Jr. is, but don’t sleep on Maury Wills. The D.C. native was one of baseball’s greatest ever base stealers. This dude was so automatic the Giants' groundskeepers used to make the basepath between first and second wet and muddy whenever the Dodgers were in town to try to deter Wills from stealing.
Wills played in almost 2,000 MLB games. Tatis Jr. has played in fewer than 200. But that small sample can suck eggs because I’m going with El Niño.
Tatis is the brightest light in our sport right now. Whether that light shines for five years, 10 years or 20 years will determine his legacy when it’s all said and done. But the way he captivates a crowd, the exuberance and energy with which he plays the game — that’s one-of-a-kind stuff. His 61 homers in his first 200 games are the third-most to start a career in MLB history and the most ever by shortstop, so he’s not just talking the talk. No one has really ever been this good this quickly. El Niño, a good son.
Advantage: Sons
LEFT FIELD
Sons: Barry Bonds, home run king, seven-time MVP (LOL), 14-time All-Star, 162.7 career bRef WAR, greatest player of all time
Fathers: Bobby Bonds, three-time All-Star, three-time Gold Glover, All-Star Game MVP
Before I talk about how this isn’t a contest because Barry Bonds has more home runs than anyone ever, let me type out a nice sentence about Papa Bonds, easily one of the most underrated players of all time. He’s one of only eight members of the 300-steal/300-homer club, he stole at least 40 bases eight times, and he walked a ton before his son made it cool.
Barry Bonds has more home runs than everyone else, though, so he wins. Sorry, but those seem like fair rules. There’s a whole warehouse of Bonds stats I could lay out to emphasize my point, but we don’t have time for that here, so how about: In 2,443 plate appearances from 2001 to 2004, Bonds had a .559 on-base percentage. Haha, OK, sure.
Advantage: Sons
CENTER FIELD
Sons: Ken Griffey Jr., 1997 AL MVP, 13-time All-Star, Hall of Famer, 10-time Gold Glover, three-time Home Run Derby champion, cultural icon
Fathers: Ken Griffey Sr., three-time All-Star, All-Star Game MVP, 34.5 career bRef WAR
This is basically the exact same situation as the Bondses. Griffey Sr. was a phenomenal player in his own right who made three All-Star teams, won an All-Star MVP and has two World Series rings, but he wasn’t Junior. To be fair, nobody was.
The younger Griffey was everything: the owner of baseball’s most beautiful swing, a defensive highlight reel waiting to happen, a baseball cultural icon. If not for injuries, he’d have challenged Bonds for the all-time home run title. Junior Griffey forever, y’all.
Advantage: Sons
RIGHT FIELD
Sons: Moises Alou, six-time All-Star, two-time silver slugger, 17-year career, 39.9 career b-Ref WAR
Fathers: Vladimir Guerrero Sr., 2004 AL MVP, nine-time All-Star, Hall of Famer
These two are easily two of the best batting-glove-less Dominican outfielders of all time, but even though Alou had an amazing career full of enduring moments, the edge has to go to Vlad Sr. It’s important to remember that before he was Vlad Sr., he was just Vlad. Despite swinging at anything within a 12-mile radius of the strike zone, Guerrero finished his career with 449 dingers and a .318 batting average. In 2002, he was a single homer short of becoming a member of the vaunted 40/40 club. He’s easily one of the most memorable players of his generation, a Montréal hero and now, thanks to Little Vlad, one of baseball’s most famous dads.
Advantage: Fathers
DESIGNATED HITTER
Sons: Vladimir Guerrero Jr., currently the best hitter on the planet, inevitable 2021 All-Star
Fathers: Tony Gwynn, once upon a time the best hitter on the planet, 15-time All-Star, eight-time batting title champ, Hall of Famer, father of Tony Gwynn Jr.
*Walks up to a chalkboard like Bart Simpson and writes, "I WILL NOT LET RECENCY BIAS IMPACT MY DECISION-MAKING. I WILL NOT LET RECE--"*
Look, I really want to pick Vlad Jr. here. I really do. He’s probably the best hitter on Planet Earth right now, a 22-year-old force of nature capable of dispatching baseballs into the stratosphere in the blink of an eye. But he has been doing these superhuman feats for only two months. Gwynn did them for two decades.
Gwynn hit .289 in 54 games in his rookie year in 1982. For the next 19 years of his career, he never hit under .300 again. That includes eight batting titles, seven seasons in which he hit over .350 and one of baseball’s greatest what-if seasons in 1994, when Gwynn was hitting .394 into August before a work stoppage brought the season to its premature end. If Vlad can copy and paste his first two months of 2021 for a decade, this becomes a debate, but until then, it’s Mr. Padre by a landslide.
Advantage: The Padre on the Fathers
PITCHER
Sons: Luis Tiant Jr., three-time All-Star, two-time ERA title champ, 229 career wins, son of Negro Leaguer Luis Tiant Sr.
Fathers: Ed Walsh, two-time ERA title champ, Hall of Famer, career 1.82 ERA (lowest of all time), father of another White Sox pitcher named Ed Walsh, except that Ed Walsh stunk
El Tiante had a whirlwind career that included legendary peaks of total dominance, such as his 21 wins and 1.60 ERA in 1968 and his 1974 season, in which he threw an inconceivable 311 1/3 innings with 22 wins and a 2.92 ERA. The Cuban hurler was also a cigar aficionado and a spiffy dresser, and he rocked one of baseball’s most magnificent horseshoe mustaches.
But despite all of Tiant’s badassery, I think the edge here goes to Ed Walsh. I know he pitched in the Before Times, I know his brilliance was the result of a devastating spitball, and I know he would show up in the big leagues today and be absolutely destroyed by your favorite team’s third-string catcher. All these things are true. But Ed Walsh literally has the lowest ERA in MLB history. Deadball era be damned, no one let up runs less frequently than this guy, so I’m reluctantly giving him the win, even though Tiant was an absolute boss.
Advantage: Fathers
MANAGER
Sons: Terry Francona, 1,740 career wins, two-time Manager of the Year, two World Series titles
Fathers: Connie Mack, 3,731 career wins, five World Series titles, nine pennants
Ready for a spicy take? Even though Mack has the most wins of all time by about a thousand over the next guy, I think Francona manages him out of the building. Baseball strategy has gotten so much more complex in the 71 years since Mack managed his last game, and because our hypothetical showdown is taking place right now, I think Mack would be way out of his depth. He’d see a spray chart on an iPad and just crumble.
Advantage: Sons
For those of you keeping score at home, that’s six wins for the dads and only five for the children. But I’m a son and not a father, so I’m picking the Sons in this theoretical matchup. I think the Tatis, Ripken, Griffey, Bonds middle of the order would be too dominant against Ed Walsh and his spitball.
But maybe I’m overlooking the Dads’ team speed and underrating their infield.
What do you think? Which squad would you take in this Father's Day baseball bowl? Let us know on Twitter @MLBONFOX and @CESPEDESBBQ.
Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.
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