Ok, I'm going in a different direction from rock and roll music.   What I want to do is to assemble the best major league team ever.  I'm going to start with the men who wear the tools of ignorance...the beloved catchers.   I'll post the career stats of what I feel are the twelve best catchers of all time.   I want to make a couple notes concerning the defensive numbers on catchers.  Since catching is a very important position to a team defensively, I want to alert you all on some defensive ratings.  Prior to 1956 stats weren't kept on stolen bases against and caught stealing as far as catchers were concerned.   So catchers on this list who played prior to 1956 will have no stats for this and players such as Yogi Berra and Roy Campanella will have incomplete numbers as their stolen base/caught stealing stats will only reflect 1956 and afterward.  One other thing I want to note is on fielding percentage.   Don't take that number too seriously.  Every couple of decades, official scorers tend to give fewer and fewer errors to players.   For instance, Mike Piazza has a career fielding percentage of .989, but the average fielding percentage over his era was .990, making him slightly less than an average fielder.   Mickey Cochrane's lifetime fielding percentage was .985, but that is compared to the norm of .980 during the course of his career.   I also will not be making any mention of gold glove players.   Players before the 60s didn't get gold gloves, and I am one of many who believe that the gold glove award in many cases is a popularity award rather than a true study of defensive achievement.    Without further ado, here is the list of my top 12 catchers

          NAME               Games   Runs    Hits     HR    RBI     BB     SB     AVE    OBP    Slug      Fldg Pct   SB Against    Caught Stealing

• J. Bench             2158     1091   2048   389    1376   891    68    .267   .342    .476      .990          610            469
• C. Fisk               2499     1276   2356   376    1330   849   128   .269   .341    .457      .988         1302           664
• T. Munson          1423      696    1558   113     701   438     48   .292    .346    .410     .982           533           427
• I. Rodriguez        2267     1253   2605   295    1217  469    124   .301   .339    .475     .991           691           604
• M. Piazza            1912     1048   2127   427    1335   759     17   .308   .377    .545     .989          1400           423
• Y. Berra              2120     1175   2150   358    1430   704     30    .285   .348   .482      .989           154           141
• R. Campanella    1215       627   1161   242     856    533     25    .276   .360   .500      .988            45              35
• G. Carter            2296      1025   2092   324    1225   848     39    .262   .335   .439      .991         1498           810
• M. Cochrane       1484      1041   1652   119      832   857     64    .320   .419   .478      .985
• B. Dickey            1789       930   1969    202    1209   678    36    .313   .382    .486      .988
• E. Lombardi        1853       601   1792    190      990   430      8    .306   .358    .460      .979
• G. Hartnett         1990       867    1912   236     1179   703    28    .297   .370    .489      .984

I'll leave this blog up for a week for voting.   Next weekend I'll have a vote for the greatest 1st basemen of all time, so I'll take any suggestions you folks may wish to render to put on that list.   For all of you who voted on my rock blog, thank you very much and I hope you'll also enjoy this as well.  Since I'm providing the career numbers for the players, I'm trying to help those of you who don't consider yourselves very baseball savvy to render an educated vote.  Happy voting all.   I'll refrain from voting on my blogs unless it is to break a tie.