Best Catcher of All Time

[Chris M.]

In order to bring some life back to the sports forum, I'm going to start weekly "Best (blank) of All Time" polls for each baseball position. They did this over on SOSH (Red Sox forum) and it successful and I figure if this is half as successful as that then we'll be fine.

Note that Josh Gibson played his entire career in the Negro Leagues.

[kshtoinks12]

Hitting wise? Probably Piazza. Best defensive catcher I've ever seen was Pudge, but of course, I'm pretty young.

[xbrokendownx]

i say Johnny bench

[SilenceBrokenTT]

Mike Scioscia...

nah, I went with Piazza for the list you put up.

[Chris M.]

I went with Bench although it was very close between he and Gibson. Top five for me:

1. Bench - could do it all. Huge threat on offense and great defensively. Was a key member of the big red machine.
2. Gibson - People have said he was "the black babe ruth" while some say he was more of a Jimmie Foxx. Either way, that kind of production at catcher would be scary to think of.
3. Cochrane - the first great offensive catcher.
4. Piazza - arguably the greatest offensive catcher of all time. Too bad he was awful defensively.
5. tie between Campanella and Berra

[achassi]

Yeah its either Bench or Yogi but I went with Bench

[fightinirish217]

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

I vote Yogi.

[bigmike]

Bench. Can't go with Gibson because there are no numbers for him and it'd just be tall-tales that put him up there.

MLB HOF will be releasing negro league statistics next summer though. They don't want to release them until they get a full set of them, so it'll be about a year.

[imirish06]

Johnny Bench, but I'm a bit biased with it. My grandfather was a huge Bench fan.

[jay_klinkhammer]

Bench right now; Mauer COULD be by the end of his career.

[takethisback]

Sandy Alomar, Jr.

[aloneatlastnj]

went with bench. according to my dad the dude could do it all.

wanted so hard to vote for yogi but that's the yankees fan in me, i guess.

[thedrewman998]

if joe keeps it up he will be..
but not right to vote for him now

[derekmoyer4]

bench followed by berra

[rcrook]

Which Red Sox homers voted Fisk?

[xNC1212x]

Saying Piazza only because he was a childhood idol of mine.

[QuikTrig]

piazza has more votes than gibson and cochrane? laughable. and how about biz mackey? when i used to cruise around my old baseball forums, some guys in there used to talk about him like he was a god. i voted gibson, though as mikes mentioned, pretty much everything about him are just personal observation accounts with no verifiable numeros.