With the recent passing of Duke Snider, I started to wonder if our generation has an equivalent to the triumvirate of May, Mantle and Snider in the 1950s.
Granted, no city has three teams any more, but are there three outfielders playing today that are/will be considered all-time greats that are great on defense, at the plate and/or have great speed like Willie, Mickey and The Duke?
This got to me to thinking and I realized that the deepest position in baseball isn't in the outfield any more, it's first base; and the list of active potentially all-time great outfielders isn't that deep, but I still wanted to see who I would pick to be our version of "Willie, Mickey and the Duke."
This was tough. Mays and Mantle are top five all-time center fielders with Snider a top seven and Mays is a top five all-time player, regardless of position with Mickey being top-15 and Snyder being top-40.
The players playing today are not anywhere close to those guys all-time and probably never will be.
So, keeping that in mind, I decided to break this down into three areas: Who were the three outfielders that would have made this list 10 years ago, who are the ones currently playing and who are the three going forward if you were to pretend it's 2021 instead of 2011.
I'll also list honorable mentions for each time period.
Let's start by going back to 2001 and see who the choices would be.
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