Johnny Bench

Imagine being a runner thinking about stealing and seeing Johnny Bench behind the plate. Maybe stay put. Reds No. 5 had the arm, the power, the hardware, and the kind of presence that made catcher feel like the center of the entire game. Bench won two MVP awards, anchored the Big Red Machine, and came away with two World Series championships. More importantly for this fight, he has a clean identity with the number. No uniform-number gymnastics required. No. 5 is Bench. His baseball rivals are brutal: Joe DiMaggio brings mythology, Albert Pujols brings a monstrous peak, and George Brett brings franchise-lifer devotion. Bench counters with positional dominance and an argument as one of the greatest catchers ever. That’s serious ammunition. But will voters reward the guy controlling every pitch, or gravitate toward the stars producing the biggest offensive fireworks? Catcher versus everybody. Bench would probably like those odds.