Astroturf, speed on the bases and power at the plate, and epic pitching performances. The '80s seemed to have it all -- except a Yankees World Series title, of course. In reviewing the magic and mayhem on the field that typified baseball in the 1980s, we asked three of ESPN.com's resident baseball experts -- Bradford Doolittle, David Schoenfield and Sam Miller -- for their thoughts on who was cool, who was overrated and the baseball cards treasured from baseball's decade without a dynasty.
Coolest player of decade
Bradford Doolittle: Dwight Gooden, even though every fiber of my being tells me to type the name George Brett. Gooden's 1985 season is the best individual season of any player in the 1980s, and for the first three years of his career, I'd move mountains to get to a television to watch him pitch.
David Schoenfield: Eric Davis for about a calendar year, but for the entire decade it has to be Brett -- and I can't believe Brad didn't go with him. Brad grew up a Royals fan! I had a Brett poster in my bedroom. (Granted, I also had a library poster with Dwight Gooden on it that read, "Dr. K says no to drugs.") Brett hit .390 in 1980. He dominated the 1985 postseason. He owned Goose Gossage. He had that sweet stance, leaning back in that crouch, making everything look so smooth and effortless.
Sam Miller: I could go a lot of different ways with the word "cool," but Ozzie Smith was a household name in a way that's impossible to imagine of, say, Omar Vizquel and Andrelton Simmons in later generations. I once got in really bad trouble and had all my baseball cards confiscated by my parents; I managed to smuggle one single card away, and I held on to it like it was life-saving medicine: Ozzie Smith's 1987 Topps. Days in class spent staring at it, totally crushing.
Most overrated player of the decade
Doolittle: Jack Morris is too often called the best pitcher of the 1980s, even though the list of better candidates includes Dave Stieb, Roger Clemens, Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela and Bert Blyleven.
Schoenfield: Vince Coleman. He was exciting, stealing 100-plus bases his first three seasons and leading the league his first six, but people wanted to compare him to Rickey Henderson and Tim Raines. Please. He didn't have the on-base ability of those two guys, let alone the power. He finished 11th in the MVP voting in 1985 (2.4 WAR), 12th in 1987 (2.8 WAR), started the 1988 All-Star Game (0.8 WAR) and was picked as a reserve in 1989 (1.7 WAR). That's overrated.
Miller: Pretty much every pitcher who led the league in saves at some point. I wish I could get back all the cards I traded away for the various Steve Bedrosians, Todd Worrells, Bobby Thigpens and especially Jeff Reardons. They had us thinking Reardon was a star, when he was just Mike Timlin. We just hadn't properly calibrated reliever stardom yet.
Underrated player of the decade
Doolittle: Tim Raines. He didn't even make the top 10 in Sporting News' end-of-decade list. Sure, he had some troubles in the 1980s, but hey, it was the 1980s. For the decade, Rock finished eighth in runs created, stole 583 bases and had a .391 OBP. He wasn't as good as Rickey Henderson, but when it came to leadoff hitters, no one was.
Schoenfield: Dwight Evans. Hit .280/.385/.497 with 256 home runs, 956 runs and 900 RBIs in the decade, yet made just two All-Star teams. He did have four top-10 MVP finishes, but when it came time for the Hall of Fame voting, he was gone after three ballots, while his longtime Red Sox teammate Jim Rice -- with much less career WAR -- eventually got in.
Miller: Raines and Evans are more convincing picks -- a Hall of Famer and one who should be -- but I'll go niche: John Tudor had the eighth-best ERA+ and the fifth-best winning percentage of the decade, and I'd guess he has maybe 10% of the name recognition that even Dwight Evans has today. In 1985, he had a 1.93 ERA -- one of only three sub-2.00 ERAs in the decade -- and despite a 2.27 ERA at the All-Star break, he didn't even make the All-Star team.
Team that owned the decade
Doolittle: No one dominated the decade. The Cardinals were the only team to win at least three pennants, and since they kind of typified a romanticized style of play from the era, they were probably the team of the 1980s.
Schoenfield: That's one thing that made the 1980s so great -- that feeling that almost anything could happen in any year (well, unless you were a Mariners fan). The Mets should have dominated the second half of the decade but won just the 1986 World Series, got upset in the 1988 NLCS and then quickly fell apart.
Miller: I guess it's the Tigers, even though they made only two postseasons and finished the decade with 103 losses. The three best single teams of the decade are the 1986 Mets, the 1988 A's and the 1984 Tigers. Of those three, the Tigers were the most dominant: They started the season 35-5, they went wire-to-wire in first place, they swept the ALCS, they took the World Series in five easy games. They weren't the team of a decade the way that the 1990s Yankees were, but I think they were the best team in that decade. Besides that season, they had the second-best winning percentage in the decade, and their stars -- Trammell and Whitaker, Morris and Gibson, Sparky Anderson -- held together through most of the decade and are very closely associated with the decade
Team that would most like to forget the decade
Doolittle: The Mariners' .430 aggregate winning percentage was easily the worst in the majors, and Seattle didn't have a single .500 season.
Schoenfield: As someone who witnessed many of those defeats, I can't disagree. But what about the Pirates? They began the decade as the defending champs but didn't make the playoffs in the decade, employed a mascot who served as the middleman between players and cocaine dealers, and the city hosted the infamous drug trials in 1985.
Miller: There were good moments early, to be sure -- Dale Murphy's MVP awards especially -- but by the second half of the decade, the Braves were a last-place debacle, drawing crowds in the low four-digits. They made only one postseason in the decade and didn't win a postseason game, they colluded so hard that their slugger Bob Horner fled to Japan, and their 106 losses in 1988 were the second most by any team in the decade.
If I could own only one '80s baseball card it would be ...
Doolittle: I actually have four or five of them, but it would be Darryl Strawberry's Topps rookie card. Topps cards are the only ones that matter.
Schoenfield: No-brainer. The 1989 Upper Deck Ken Griffey Jr. rookie card.
Miller: Ozzie Smith, 1987 Topps.
Best trade/worst trade
Doolittle: The Phillies' sending Ryne Sandberg and Larry Bowa to the Cubs for Ivan DeJesus didn't work out too well for them but changed baseball history in Chicago. Yes, the Phillies made a World Series with DeJesus, and, yes, Bowa was way older. But everybody on the 1983 pennant-winning Phillies was ancient and Bowa still had three more seasons as a regular, including on the 1984 division-winning Cubs. The Phillies would have been fine keeping Bowa, and they still would have had Sandberg. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
Schoenfield: The Yankees won the most games in the decade but didn't win a World Series. Maybe they would have if not for a couple of terrible trades. They traded 1985 NL MVP Willie McGee to the Cardinals in 1981 for reliever Bob Sykes (who never pitched again in the majors), and in 1982, they traded young minor leaguer Fred McGriff for washed-up veteran reliever Dale Murray. That's 86 future WAR for nothing -- actually, Murray produced negative WAR, so it was 86 WAR for less than nothing.
Miller: The trade that turned around my childhood was the Giants-Padres swap in July 1987, which worked out OK for both sides: The Padres got Chris Brown, Keith Comstock, Mark Grant and Mark Davis. Brown and Comstock flopped, but Davis would win the Cy Young award as a closer in 1989, and Grant is the Padres' beloved TV broadcaster to this day. But for the Giants, the return of Kevin Mitchell (of bare-handed-grab fame), Craig Lefferts and Dave Dravecky changed everything. They were five games out of first when they made the trade but roared into first place, making the postseason for the first time in 16 years. Then, Mitchell would be the NL MVP in 1989, the year they went to the World Series for the first time in a quarter-century -- with Lefferts closing. And Dave Dravecky's comeback from a tumor in his throwing arm was one of the most emotional moments of the decade, and in franchise history. (The worst trade wasn't actually the Yankees' trading Buhner, but let's go with it. He's got a rocket for an arm!)