Chicago Herald-American

After slogging through the "50 Best Bears," "50 Best Bulls" and "50 Best Blackhawks" features for the Sun-Times, I thought the Sox and Cubs would be a piece of cake. Baseball is so steeped in statistics, it's much easier to define the impact of every player. Even defensive contributions are recognized with the Gold Glove awards (though they didn't give those out until 1957). 

As it turned out, I was too right. I was overwhelmed by the statistical data available, especially on baseballreference.com, which has a search-and-sort feature that can find almost any data imaginable.

In making a case for Dick Allen in the top 10 despite playing fewer than three seasons, I discovered that Allen not only won the AL MVP Award in 1972, but hit .345 (19-for-55) with five homers, 13 RBIs and a 1.210 OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) against the top seven pitchers in the Cy Young voting.

And when making a case against Albert Belle, who had one of the greatest seasons in Sox history in 1998 when he hit 49 home runs and drove in 152 runs, I confirmed my recollection that he did most of the damage after the Sox were out of contention: Belle hit 33 homers and drove in 92 runs in the final 83 games that season -- after the Sox were 14 1/2 games out of first place.

You literally could spend a month going through the available information to come up with a 50 Best list and it would probably be better than this list, which ran in Friday's paper. I'm pretty comfortable with the list, especially the Top 10: Frank Thomas, Luke Appling, Eddie Collins, Nellie Fox, Joe Jackson, Dick Allen, Luis Aparicio, Ed Walsh, Minnie Minoso and Ted Lyons. 

I don't think there would be much debate about Thomas being No. 1 on the list -- nobody I talked to even hinted at disagreeing with that. But it was suggested I make a case for him being No. 1 in spite of being mostly a DH and, to a lesser extent, an enigmatic, if not-well-liked, figure in Sox history. The previous No. 1 picks, after all, were Walter Payton, Michael Jordan (though technically Scottie Pippen the way we ended up doing the Bulls) and Stan Mikita. 

It's not like there was a big debate. But it is interesting that Thomas disdained playing the field, preferring to concentrate on his hitting -- even though statistics clearly prove he's a better hitter when he plays the field (.337, 36 HRs, 117 RBIs per 500 at-bats) than when he's a designated hitter (.275, 29, 94). 

And one point I did not make in the story is that Frank Thomas isn't the only player on the list -- high on the list, in fact -- with a significant flaw. There are five members of the Black Sox on the list, of varying degrees of culpability in the scandal (Joe Jackson, Ed Cicotte, Buck Weaver, Lefty Williams and Happy Felsch). And Dick Allen literally quit on the White Sox in 1974, leaving the team with two weeks left when the Sox, contenders in late July, were out of the race. And "Big Frank" still played first base in more than half of his games with the White Sox. 

As with all of these 50 Best lists, it got kind of dicey toward the end. There were probably 50 or more candidates for the last five spots. I don't imagine it'll be any easier when we conclude the series with the Cubs next week. 

(You can find the Best 50 White Sox feature hopefully by clicking this link to the Sun-Times web site. You might have to go to the main sports section page to find the gallery that includes the 50 players.)