Baseball DIY

...be a good player (Albert Pujols, for example) on a bad team or a below-average/average player (say, Geoff Blum) on a World Series team?

I'd rather be the below-average/average player on the World Series team. Assuming I'm not so bad that they would send me down to the minors, I would have no problem serving as one of the invisible contributors to a pennant-winning ballclub. The first five seconds after my team got the Series-winning hit/Series-ending out would make the whole experience worthwhile for me, and I could carry that memory with me the rest of my life. Winning a World Series is something that you can share with 30 or so other people. No one can relate to the joy (I'm assuming he felt joy) Barry Bonds felt when he broke Mark McGwire's home run record. That's something that isolates you from the rest of the world.

Of course, there's the potential for feeling like a coattail-rider whose day in the sun is almost directly attributable to the success of someone/everyone else...But I'm ignoring that right now.

Most of the arguments I can think of for wanting to be the good player on a bad team are selfish. You get paid more, you get the attention, you get an undue amount of credit (or blame) for your team's on-field success...Is there any other reason to want to be Ernie Banks, as it were?

That's not a rhetorical question. If I'm missing something, fill me in.