One Team Careers: Part Two

In this installment we review the players who ranked eleventh through twentieth on the all-time games played list. If you wish to learn the genesis of this series of articles you may refer to the original article posted on September 15th.

11. Rusty Staub ---------------- 2,951 games
12. Brooks Robinson ---------- 2,896
13. Robin Yount --------------- 2,856
14. Al Kaline ------------------- 2,834
15. Harold Baines ------------- 2,830
16. Eddie Collins -------------- 2,826
17. Reggie Jackson ------------ 2,820
18. Frank Robinson ----------- 2,808
19. Honus Wagner ------------ 2,792
20. Tris Speaker -------------- 2,789

Right off the bat at number eleven we are met with Rusty Staub. I mention Staub because he is the first player encountered who would not be judged by the baseball polity as an all-time great. In Staub's twenty-three seasons he played for five teams.

The next three players, though, are considered all-time greats. Brooks Robinson, Robin Yount and Al Kaline were similar to each other in the way they quietly and efficiently went about their jobs. They each also played for one team their entire careers. Robinson (1955-1977) and Kaline (1953-1974) were contemporaries in the same league for twenty seasons as they played for the Baltimore Orioles and Detroit Tigers. Yount, playing for the Milwaukee Brewers, began his career in 1974 as an eighteen year old and was Kaline's contemporary for one season and Robinson's for four seasons.

The rest of the list does not offer any other one team career players. Honus Wagner is the closest to being a one teamer but his three year stint at the beginning of his career with the Louisville Colonels prevents that.

Using the same statistical device used with our one through ten ranked players I will add on Robinson, Yount and Kaline to the table below. One point is added per year to the decade that the player year was played in.

DECADE ------- Years Represented
1900-1909 ----- 0
1910-1919 ------ 0
1920-1929 ----- 0
1930-1939 ----- 0
1940-1949 ----- 8
1950-1959 ----- 22
1960-1969 ----- 33
1970-1979 ----- 29
1980-1989 ----- 23
1990-1999 ----- 14
2000+ --------- 2

A concentration of years has quickly become apparent after cataloging the six one team career players who are in the top twenty all-time in games played. The four decades from 1950 through 1989 hold 81% of all the years of the six one team players.

Is a trend developing or is our sample size still too small? At this point in the study probably the latter. In my third article I will review the twenty-first through fortieth players on the all-time games played list.