The notion was raised by Peter Gammons a couple weeks ago on WEEI. The Hall of Fame scribe recalled that Rickey Henderson found the physical punishment of playing center field to be somewhat detrimental to his offense. There were lessons, Gammons said, to be drawn in considering what made sense for the career of Red Sox outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury:

"I remember in ’84 or ’85, when the Yankees got Rickey Henderson in a trade with the A’s, I was doing a story on him in beautiful downtown Winter Haven. He said to me, ‘The beating you take when you steal 70 to 100 bases a year is incredible,’" Gammons said. "Now, with Rickey, he went into the bag so hard, head first, he was beating up his hands and legs. He said, ‘It’s really hard to play center field and run 100 times a year.’ Barry Bonds has told me the same thing. That’s why he wasn’t playing center field in Pittsburgh. He was playing left field.

"I think Ellsbury really wants to be a great offensive player. [Ellsbury's agent, Scott] Boras is smart enough to know that a Gold Glove is not going to go to arbitration the same way that hitting .300 and stealing 80 bases will. So I think he’ll be open to it. He played left field in the Cape League. They’ll play Ellsbury in left field 80-100 games a year, rest his legs a little bit, and maybe it will keep him fresher over the course of the season."

On Friday, Boras had an opportunity to offer his analysis of the move of Ellsbury to left field for the coming season to allow Mike Cameron -- a three-time Gold Glover -- to play center. (Noteworthy: the Sox remain convinced that, over the long haul, Ellsbury is their center fielder of the future; it would not come as a shock if, sometime in the next two seasons, the two outfielders swapped positions.) And the agent did indeed endorse the move, citing the potential benefits to both the Red Sox and to Ellsbury.

"Mike Cameron is clearly a guy who has been a center fielder his whole life. He’s a veteran," Boras said at Fenway on Friday. "To make an adjustment at this point in his career, we agreed that it’s probably better for the Red Sox to keep Mike in center field. Jacoby’s a good teammate and said, ‘I understand that.’

"The other thing is, [Ellsbury] is an intense offensive player. When you’re out there, with that body type, banging 60, 70 stolen bases," Boras continued. "I studied who has 60, 70 stolen bases, who scores 100 runs and who plays center field long term. Check it out. The metrics don’t work. It’s a lot. It’s a lot. So the idea was, there is benefit and detriment to it. The idea was that your contribution to this team is so important to us, and the stress [centerfield] puts on your body is extraordinary."

It is worth asking: is that true? Baseball-Reference.com identifies 17 seasons in which a player who spent at least half of his games in center stole 60 or more bases and scored at least 100 runs since 1901.

Ty Cobb managed to do it five times, Kenny Lofton did it three times, and both Ron LeFlore and Rickey Henderson accomplished it twice; five other players did it once and only once. Notably, Ellsbury came just short of the accomplishment in 2009, since he scored just 94 runs last year.

Certainly, the greatest stolen base artists in the game's history have spent most of their careers in left field. Indeed, four of the top five career base stealers in modern (post-1900) baseball history have spent most of their careers in left field: Henderson, Lou Brock, Tim Raines and Vince Coleman.

But does that really prove anything? Is it possible to draw any conclusions about whether a player is better able to sustain his production as a run-scoring base-stealer based on his position?

It would be difficult to find any objective evidence that one position or the other is better suited to a long-lasting career as a menace on the bases. Again, turning to Baseball-Reference.com, it turns out that there have been only 23 instances since 1901 in which a left fielder has pulled off the double feat of swiping 60 bags and scoring 100 runs.

Just six players -- Henderson (8 times), Lou Brock (4 times), Willie Wilson (twice), Vince Coleman (twice), Tim Raines (twice) and Bob Bescher (twice) -- account for 20 of those 23 instances.

What this suggests is that stealing 60 bags and scoring 100 runs is an extremely rare feat, regardless of position. With the exception of Rickey Henderson, a freak of nature who did it nine times in 11 years from 1980-1990 (and was only prevented from doing so in 1981 by a strike and in 1987 by injuries), a player is probably not going to be able to sustain those totals year after year no matter what position he plays. And if a player does have the ability to be a 60/100 guy, the position doesn't seem to have an obvious effect.

Consider Raines, who hit .298/.393/.429/.822 with 90 steals and 133 runs in 1983 as a 23-year-old left fielder, .309/.393/.437/.830 with 75 steals and 106 runs after moving to center as a 24-year-old in 1984, and .320/.405/.475/.880 with 70 steals and 115 runs in 1985 after moving back to left field at age 25.

Offensively, Raines was getting better because he was entering his prime. Yet even though he stayed in left field starting with that age 25 season, his stolen base totals would soon decrease significantly.

Moreover, it is also worth noting that six center fielders have turned in seasons of 60/100 years at the age of 26 or later. Just four left fielders have accomplished that feat. (Ellsbury will be entering his age 26 season in 2010.)

That doesn't mean that it's a bad idea to move Jacoby Ellsbury from center to left. It simply means that it is difficult to determine how -- or whether -- such a move will impact him as an offensive player.

That being the case, the chief criterion about such an alignment should likely be run prevention. And, ultimately, the Sox' decision to have Ellsbury in left and Cameron in center was made on just such a basis. In the end, the Sox made their decision about the deployment of Ellsbury and Cameron based strictly on what they considered their best defensive positioning.

"Cameron’s been a guy who’s been a center fielder for 16 years. He played right for a few months, had an incident in right field [an ugly collision with Carlos Beltran of the Mets in 2005]. He’s very comfortable in center, very good in center, and Jacoby can be outstanding in left," said Sox general manager Theo Epstein. "It puts us in the best position to win games for now, and we’re going to keep an open mind going forward. At some point, if Jacoby Ellsbury in center and Mike Cameron in the corner puts us in the best position to win games, whether it’s a year and a half from now, three years from now, whenever it is, then I think all parties will get together to make that move."