Locally, we know the legend of Miguel Cabrera. We know he's one of the greatest right-handed hitters of all time, because he's done things that so few of his peers have matched. We know that he's the only Triple Crown winner in the last 50-plus years. We know that in short order, Cabrera will become just the seventh player in MLB history to join the 500-homer, 3,000-hit club. And do you know the others?
Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Eddie Murray, Rafael Palmeiro, Alex Rodriguez and Albert Pujols.
But nationally, Cabrera tends to get overlooked. His legacy, for whatever reason, gets undersold. Take it from two sports-media giants in Tony Kornheiser and Mike Wilbon, who were baffled by Cabrera's greatness the more they discussed it Monday on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption in the wake of his 500th home run.
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Wilbon said he visited Cabrera's baseball-reference page in preparation for the show because he felt like the future Hall of Famer doesn't get the praise he deserves. When he got there and saw all the bold-face statistics -- denoting a player was a league-leader in a given season -- Wilbon couldn't believe his eyes.
"I knew he had to have one batting title because he won a Triple Crown — oh wait, Triple Crown, something that so few people have done in the last 50 years. No, he’s got four batting titles!" Wilbon said. "And every list he’s on is something like, 'That only includes Ted Williams, Henry Aaron, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.' He’s on these lists, these tiny little lists, and it led me to conclude -- go deeper, boys and girls, because this is one of the great and underrated players of all time."
Kornheiser responded by highlighting Cabrera's pursuit of 3,000 hits, which will conclude either late this season or early next.
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"I want to fixate on the 3,000 for a particular reason, because let me give you a partial list of people who did not get 3,000 hits: Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Barry Bonds. I don’t think I have to name anybody else," Kornheiser said. "Look, he’s a power hitter with 3,000 hits. Two things are true: power hitters don’t get a lot of pitches to look at and slow right-handed power hitters don’t ever leg anything out. And this guy was .320 or above -- and let me get this right -- hello, nine times! As a hitter, he dwarfs some of the people who are on this (500-homer) list with him. He does."
Which led to a natural follow-up from Wilbon: "Why isn’t he more widely praised? Why isn’t he more widely viewed as one of the great players of all time? How is it that Cabrera isn’t on our tongues all the time as one of the great, great players in the history of this game?"
"Well, he should be," said Kornheiser.
But Wilbon wasn't finished. He brought Mike Trout into the conversation to crystallize Cabrera's status as one of baseball's all-time greats.
"Trout is slurped and praised and legitimately so. He’s not Cabrera," said Wilbon. "Trout ain't Cabrera! But yet we praise Trout every day and, ‘Poor Trout, he doesn't have a team that’s any good.' Trout ain't Cabrera, man! How has baseball not celebrated this dude more? It’s ridiculous."
From Detroit to baseball fans everywhere else, that sounds like a You Problem.
