This is an opinion column.

There was little argument before Tuesday that Willie Mays was the greatest living player in baseball history.

And after Mays’ death just two days before the MLB at Rickwood Field game between Mays’ Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, the case certainly can be made that he is the greatest all-around player the sport has ever seen. Joe Posnanski, perhaps the most respected and thoughtful baseball history writer working today, thought so, listing Mays — born in 1931 in the Birmingham suburb of Westfield, and elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1979 — at No. 1 on his Baseball 100 list of the greatest players in the sport’s history.

Mays was in high school when he joined the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948, and just 20 years old when he debuted with the New York Giants in 1951. He was National League Rookie of the Year for the pennant-winning Giants that season, and NL MVP in 1954, when his iconic catch in Game 1 of the World Series — arguably the greatest defensive play in baseball history — sparked New York to a four-game sweep of Cleveland for the championship.

That play made Mays an icon in baseball and his continued excellence for the next two decades made him an inner-circle great for all-time. He was a 24-time All-Star, won a second MVP in 1965 after the Giants moved to San Francisco, took home 12 Gold Gloves and more than 50 years after he played his last game — at age 42 for the New York Mets in 1973 — remains in the Top 10 in games played (3,005), runs scored (2,068), total bases (6,080) and home runs (660).

Quite simply, there has never been another player who combined offensive and defensive excellence to the level that Mays did. Other Hall-of-Famers such as Johnny Bench, Cal Ripken and Adrian Beltre were great both with the bat and the glove, but none approached Mays at the plate.

Mays won a batting title in 1954, twice led the league in on-base percentage, five times in slugging percentage and four times in home runs. In 23 seasons, he averaged .301, 36 home runs, 103 RBIs and a .940 OPS.

Mays ranks fourth all-time among hitters in the catch-all statistic of Wins Above Replacement at 136.5, behind only Babe Ruth (154.4), Ty Cobb (151.7) and Barry Bonds (143.6). He led his league in WAR 10 times in a 13-year period from 1954-66, leading one to believe he could have — and perhaps should have — won at least three times as many MVP Awards as he actually did.

Of course, speed was a huge part of Mays’ game. He is one of just eight players with 300 or more home runs and 300-plus steals, one of three (with Bonds and Alex Rodriguez) to surpass 500 homers and 300 steals.

Mays led the league in steals four straight years from 1956-59. In two of those seasons, he surged past 30 home runs and 30 steals.

Defensively, Mays is one man whose statistics validate the eye test. He’s the all-time leader in putouts as a center fielder, ranks seventh in assists and third in double plays.

The advanced metrics liked him, too. Only three men who played at least 70% of their career games in the outfield have more Defensive WAR than Mays’ 18.2 — Andruw Jones (24.4), Kevin Kiermaier (20.3 and still counting) and Paul Blair (18.8), but none of them came close to Mays as a hitter.

The player with the strongest argument to supplanting Mays at the top of the list might be Shohei Ohtani, the great Japanese pitcher/designated hitter currently with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ohtani certainly has done things on a baseball field few ever have, and if he recovers from a second Tommy John surgery to again become a star-caliber pitcher, he’d have an excellent case for No. 1.

In a different era, Mays might have been a pitcher, too. His rocket right arm was his best attribute as a young player, so much so that some of the teams who scouted him while he was playing with the Birmingham Black Barons in the late 1940s considered him an even better prospect on the mound.

According to James S. Hirsch’s 2010 Mays biography Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend, Black Barons manager Piper Davis encountered a Pittsburgh Pirates scout in New Orleans in 1949. Davis told the scout the Pirates could acquire Mays’ contract for a measly $2,000.

“Nah,” the scout said. “Even if we got him, we’d make a pitcher out of him.”

Mays instead signed with the Giants in 1950 for $15,000. A little more than a year later, he was starting in center field at the Polo Grounds for the then-New York Giants.

Mays was a constant in center field in New York, then San Francisco and finally New York again for the next two decades. And in the 50 years since his retirement, his legend has only grown.

So tonight, tip your glasses to Willie Howard Mays Jr., the greatest baseball player who ever lived.

Creg Stephenson has worked for AL.com since 2010 and has written about sports for a variety of publications since 1994. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @CregStephenson.