First Gloves: Buddy Bell

If Brooks Robinson didn’t exist, there’s a very strong chance we’d all be talking about Buddy Bell as the greatest defensive third baseman in baseball history.

That’s not an absolute, because there are plenty of other candidates. Mike Schmidt and Nolan Arenado. Adrian Beltré and Scott Rolen. The former Twins with names that start with G, Graig Nettles and Gary Gaetti. The recently-written-about Clete Boyer. It’s a deep bench.

But Buddy Bell might have been the best of them in a Brooks-free world, making him certainly worthy of having a nice Wilson signature model glove like this one:

And yet he’s not top-of-mind when we talk about all-time great third basemen, for a few reasons I think. The first was that Brooks Robinson shadow he played in when he first arrived in the major leagues. That was a big shadow, one that dimmed the lights of a lot of great-fielding third basemen over the years.