Steve Webb
When it came time for MLB to commemorate Jackie Robinson Day last year, it was only logical that the league would call on Mookie Betts to narrate a special video featuring the words of Robinson. After all, they were both now inextricably connected by Dodger blue. Robinson, nearly 40 years gone, was a distant memory for most fans, and Betts was about to embark on a memory-making 2020 season.
For the director of the video, filmmaker Randy Wilkins, the choice of Betts as the narrator was obvious. “Mookie was at the top of my list,” Wilkins said in an interview with the LA Times. He said that he was drawn to the “natural connection between Mookie and Jackie, both being Dodgers, being prominent Black players, both being transcendent talents.”
“The lineage was clear,” Wilkins continued. “I thought it was really important to show that Jackie’s legacy was living through Mookie.” The video, shared on Betts’ Twitter feed on August 28 of last year (the special one-off Jackie Robinson Day because of the pandemic), shows videos from Robinson’s life and career with a simple message about dignity, activism, and progress:
Of course, no player will ever have the impact culturally that Jackie Robinson did when he broke the MLB color barrier in 1947. So to compare Jackie to Mookie in that way is unfair to both men. However, I do think it is fair to compare the two as ball players. And not just because they play for the Dodgers, but because of the way both could and can completely disrupt a game. Let’s look at some numbers for the two men’s careers, and as we do we notice some remarkable similarities.
Careers
Jackie’s career wasn’t the longest. He spent a few years in the Negro Leagues before joining the Dodgers at 29 and he retired at 36. Betts, on the other hand, broke into the big leagues at age 21 and is only 28 now, so we are looking at two different stages of the men’s careers. Thrown in among Robinson’s stats are his final couple years of decline, when the rigors of the game and of the burden he carried had worn him down. In total, Robinson had 4877 major league at-bats. So far, Mookie has had only about 3,500, so it will be another couple of years before the lifetime stats are truly comparable.
Hitting
Still, the similarities thus far are remarkable. Jackie Robinson had .311 career batting average and a lifetime OPS of .883. Betts so far in his career is hitting .301 with a OPS of .896. Betts has 157 home runs, and Robinson hit only 137 over more at-bats, so definitely Mookie has a bit more pop in his bat than Jackie did, but Robinson had a better OBP: .409 for Robinson vs. .374 for Betts. So, I guess if I needed somebody to get on base to start a rally, I’d choose Robinson, but if I needed a clutch homer, Betts would be my man.
Fielding
I’d have to go with a slight advantage to Betts on this one, as his shelf full of Gold Gloves attest to. However, don’t sell Robinson short. He was an extremely versatile defender long before that sort of thing even became fashionable. He played second base mostly in his career, but he went all over the infield, playing first and third as well. He even played about 300 games in the outfield over the course of his career. I wish I had a good Robinson defensive highlight to show you, but we’ll have to be satisfied watching Mookie do this thing in the NLCS last year.
Baserunning
Here’s where I see the most similarity between these two awesome players. Once either of them gets on base, look out. Jackie Robinson had a knack for getting inside pitchers’ heads on the base paths, and his ability to swipe a bag was uncanny. His high-water mark of 37 steals came in his MVP year of 1949, and of course his steals of home are the stuff of legend.
In the same way, Mookie is incredibly disruptive on the bases. He may not steal as many bags as Robinson at his prime (his season high is 30), but that is mostly because the stolen base has become such an undervalued commodity in the modern game. Still, watching him score from third on a ground ball is every bit as exciting as the Robinson steal of home.
So who would you rather have to start your franchise? It’s sort of an impossible question to answer, sort of like who would win between Spiderman and Batman. The two players are both awesome for their time. Certainly because of his legacy, Jackie Robinson has a special place in history, and Mookie would be the first to acknowledge that without Jackie, there would be no Mookie. So I will leave it to others to decided who is the better player.
I only know that I am glad that they are both Dodgers.
