I stumbled on this while looking over some baseball player comparisons.
I know that RBIs is near the top of the list of baseball stats that are now looked down upon, (though while this is justified in part as a means of assessing individual player contributions, it also goes along with the current dominant paradigm of not seeing a baseball team and wins as units of analysis, and so is influenced by the methodological individualism that pervades and distorts almost all of our ways of seeing the world in recent decades - but I digress).
But this is still striking, even allowing for how many pennant winning teams Joe Dimaggio played on.
OF course, you need people on base in front of you to drive in runs, but many of the hitters on this list arguably had players batting in front of them that had better OBPs than the people Dimaggio hit behind. This probably explains much of why Gehrig is at the top of the list as far as I could find. He hit behind Babe Ruth. But Al Simmons' numbers partly reflect Max Bishop's amazing lifetime OBP. I don't really know who was typically hitting in front of Dimaggio. But given his lower HR totals his RBI per 162 is just astounding ! Further, the RBI numbers of many of the deadball era hitters are equally striking.
Has baseball been getting it all wrong after all? I wouldn't say that necessarily, nor call for a turn away from the statistical revolution of recent years.
But after growing up a Yankees' fan in the 1960s and 70s whereby Dimaggio was royalty, then finding out a) he was a pretty rotten person really, and b) coming to the conclusion that there is good reason to think he was overrated compared with Ted Williams, Stan Musial (who however said that Dimaggio was always a greater player than he), Mickey Mantle and others, I must say that I have some newfound respect for the Yankee Clipper. After all, you do have to hit pretty consistently with people on base to have 143 RBI per 162 games, and he did it without Gehrig or Greenberg or Ruth's HR numbers.
Another thing: why are Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays' (and some others) RBI per 162 so low? This seems almost equally anomalous.
Anyway, someone out there may find a few players I missed who belong on this list and did better, but this was what I have been able to discover:
Joe Dimaggio 13 years PA: 7673 AB: 6821 HR: 361 RBI: 1537 RBI per 162: 143
Mickey Mantle: 18 years: PA: 9907 AB: 8102 HR: 536 RBI: 1509 RBI per 162: 102
Ted Williams: 19 years: PA: 9788 AB:7706 HR: 521 RBI: 1839 RBI per 162 games: 130
Henry Aaron: 23 years: PA: 13941 AB: 12364 HR: 755 RBI:2297 RBI per 162 games: 113
Willie Mays: 22 years: PA: 12496 AB: 10881 HR: 660 RBI:1903 RBI per 162 games: 103
Babe Ruth: 22 years: PA: 10622 AB: 8399 HR: 714 RBI: 2214 RBI per 162 games: 143
Lou Gehrig: 17 years: PA: 9663 AB: 8001 HR: 493 RBI: 1995 RBI per 162 games: 149
Barry Bonds: 22 years: PA: 12606 AB: 9847 HR: 762 RBI: 1996 RBI per 162 games: 108
Jimmy Foxx: 20 years: PA: 9676 AB: 8134 HR: 534 RBI: 1922 RBI per 162 games: 134
Al Simmons: 20 years: PA: 9518 AB: 8759 HR: 307 RBI: 1828 RBI per 162 games: 134
Mark McGwire: 16 years: PA: 7660 AB: 6187 HR: 583 RBI: 1414 RBI per 162 games: 122
Sammy Sosa: 18 years: PA: 9896 AB: 8813 HR: 609 RBI: 1667 RBI per 162: 115
Albert Pujols: 14 years: PA: 9241 AB: 7943 HR: 520 RBI: 1603 RBI per 162: 123
Alex Rodriguez: 20 years: PA: 11344 AB: 9818 HR: 654 RBI: 1969 RBI per 162: 124
Mike Schmidt: 18 years: PA: 10062 AB: 8352 HR: 548 RBI: 1595 RBI per 162: 107
Stan Musial: 22 years: PA: 12717 AB: 10972 HR: 475 RBI: 1951 RBI per 162: 104
Eddie Mathews: 17 years: PA: 10100 AB: 8537 HR: 512 RBI: 1453 RBI per 162: 98
Hack Wilson: 12 years: PA: 5556 AB: 4760 HR: 244 RBI: 1063 RBI per 162: 128
Ken Griffey, Jr.: 22 years: PA: 11304 AB: 9801 HR: 630 RBI: 1836 RBI per 162: 111
Juan Gonzalez: 17 years: PA. 7155 AB: 6556 HR: 434 RBI: 1404 RBI per 162 games: 135
Frank Thomas: 19 years: PA: 10075 AB: 8199 HR: 521 RBI: 1704 RBI per 162 games: 119
Miguel Cabrera: 12 years: PA: 7811 AB: 6829 HR: 390 RBI: 1369 RBI per 162 games: 122
Ernie Banks: 19 years: PA: 10394 AB: 9421 HR: 512 RBI: 1636 RBI per 162 games: 105
Harmon Killebrew: 22 years: PA: 9833 AB: 8147 HR: 573 RBI: 1584 RBI per 162 games: 104
Frank Robinson: 21 years: PA: 11742 AB: 10006 HR: 586 RBI: 1812 RBI per 162 games: 105
Ty Cobb: 24 years: PA: 13084 AB: 11434 HR: 117 RBI: 1938 RBI per 162 games: 103
Rogers Hornsby: 23 years: PA: 9480 AB: 8173 HR: 301 RBI: 1584 RBI per 162 games: 114
Honus Wagner: 21 years: PA: 11748 AB: 10439 HR. 101 RBI: 1733 RBI per 162 games: 100
Nap LaJoe: 21 years: PA: 10461 AB: 9589 HR: 82 RBI: 1599 RBI per 162 games: 104
Reggie Jackson: 21 years: PA: 11418 AB: 9864 HR: 563 RBI: 1702 RBI per 162 games: 98
George Brett 21 years: PA: 11625 AB: 10349 HR: 317 RBI: 1596 RBI per 162 games: 96
Hank Greenberg: 13 years: PA: 6097 AB: 5193 HR: 331 RBI: 1276 RBI per 162 games: 148
Rafael Palmeiro: 20 years: PA: 12046 AB: 10472 HR: 569 RBI: 1835 RBI per 162 games: 105
Manny Ramirez: 19 years: PA: 9774 AB: 8244 HR: 555 RBI: 1831 RBI per 162: 129
David Ortiz: 18 years: PA: 8851 AB: 7575 HR: 466 RBI: 1533 RBI per 162: 118
Vladimir Guerrero: 16 years: PA: 9059 AB: 8155 HR: 449 RBI: 1496 RBI per 162: 113
Goose Goslin: 18 years: PA: 9829 AB: 8656 HR: 248 RBI. 1610 RBI per 162 games: 114
Willie McCovey: 22 years: PA: 9692 AB: 8197 HR: 521 RBI: 1555 RBI per 162 games: 97
Jim Thome: 22 years: PA: 10313 AB: 8422 HR: 612 RBI: 1699 RBI per 162 games: 108
Cap Anson: 27 years: PA: 11331 AB: 10281 HR: 97 RBI: 2075 RBI per 162 games: 133
RBI per 162 games:
Top 15:
Lou Gehrig: 149
Hank Greenberg: 148
Joe Dimaggio: 143
Babe Ruth: 143
Juan Gonzalez: 135
Jimmy Foxx: 134
Al Simmons: 134
Cap Anson: 133
Ted Wililams: 130
Manny Ramirez: 129
Hack Wilson: 128
Alex Rodriguez: 124
Albert Pujols: 123
Mark McGwire: 122
Frank Thomas: 119