In the year of Bryce Harper and the Astros and young call-ups galore, Mike Trout received the recognition he deserves last week, and all it took was leading off the All-Star game with a home run and becoming the first player to win consecutive All-Star MVP awards.

As a paragon of consistency, Trout hasn’t received the flavor-of-the-month coverage he earned as a rookie, but he was certainly the flavor of choice for writers after the All-Star game. Jayson Stark gave my favorite description, calling Trout “the best player in the cosmos” and his All-Star teammates as “mere mortals.”

Especially coming on the night that Major League Baseball honored the top players from each franchise’s history, it was fitting to see Trout receive the hyperbolic adulation inspired by the sport’s legends. But I have to ask—what in the cosmos took so long?

Efforts by FOX’s broadcast before the game paralleled other media efforts to frame Trout not as the undisputed best player in the sport but rather as part of a competition with Harper for the top spot. But let’s get this out of the way up front: as long as Trout and Harper remain on opposite coasts, in opposite leagues and not competing for the same awards or pennants, they will not be the sort of rivals that MLB envisions.

Sure, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson also played on opposite coasts in opposite conferences, but what made their rivalry, well, magical was their years of NBA Finals showdowns. Neither Harper nor Trout has ever won a playoff round, and even with both the Angels and Nationals in first place in their respective divisions, there is still just a small chance that they meet in the World Series.

So until Harper (apparently inevitably) signs with the Yankees, the two can divide their dominion over baseball like the Greek gods partitioning the world: Zeus gets the heavens, Poseidon the seas, and Trout the American League. And given Stark’s “mere mortals” analysis, comparing Trout and Harper to all-powerful gods isn’t so far-fetched.

But there does seem to be a difference in how the two best players in baseball are perceived. Harper makes frequent headlines and leads ESPN’s “SportsCenter” with his every home run; Trout’s consistent excellence is already taken for granted, and he’s almost considered too boring to merit such attention.

Harper has spent the last three and a half months hitting like early-2000s Barry Bonds, but Trout has spent the last three and a half seasons defying reasonable historical expectations to the point that I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard writers deem him another Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays.

Mantle also serves as venerable company for Trout as the Angels’ outfielder achieves rare statistical feats previously accomplished by only a select few.

For instance, Trout has led the American League in runs scored for three consecutive years, joining an exclusive club of Ty Cobb, Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Mantle. (Trout also leads the AL in runs in 2015, and he’d be the first player ever to lead either league in runs four straight times.)

Trout has also finished in the top two in MVP voting three straight years. Since World War II, that matches only Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, and Mantle.

Cementing the Trout-Mantle comparison: by Baseball-Reference’s similarity score feature, Mantle is the player most similar to Trout at this stage in his career, followed by Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr., Miguel Cabrera, and Al Kaline.

Despite Mantle’s reputation as the fastest man in the majors, his career high in stolen bases was just 21, and Trout seems to be following that path. He has quietly evolved from a potential 40-40 threat into a more traditional slugger—he even led the AL in strikeouts last year—but because he’s Mike Trout, “traditional” slugger means best slugger in the league. To wit, he leads the AL in slugging percentage and home runs.

Trout turning himself into the league’s best power hitter is the baseball equivalent of Wilt Chamberlain just deciding he wanted to be the NBA’s best passer and then leading the league in assists.

Like Chamberlain, Trout is also tops in other statistical categories, but to admire his raw numerical supremacy you can look at the black ink lavishly splashed across his Baseball-Reference page. Instead, this panegyric is a tribute to the pleasing aesthetics of Trout’s game, which somehow match his cosmic numbers.

Watching Trout play is every bit as satisfying as watching a Stanton home run or a Kershaw strikeout or a Simmons web gem; he is the best skills in the game rolled into one perennial MVP candidate.

If a group of fans was asked to think about Harper on the field, almost all of them would picture him at the plate. Harper’s swing is titanic (not to mix my Greek metaphors); it’s so vicious that it seems he genuinely despises baseballs, that one time a ball wronged him and the best measure of vengeance he can concoct is to blast a slider 450 feet into the restricted airspace over Washington, D.C.

That specialization isn’t a knock on Harper; most top players have one aspect that is clearly their forte. But what does one picture for Trout? Is it him leaping at the wall, bringing back a home run and nonchalantly tossing the ball back to the infield? Is it him rounding second on a ball hit to the gap and sliding headfirst under a third-baseman’s tag? Or is it him at the plate, his swing compact and clean, sweeping through the strike zone like a scythe and launching a pitch toward the rocks beyond Angel Stadium’s centerfield fence?

All of the above are acceptable options; all of the above are aesthetic marvels. He is the only outfielder with multiple home-run robberies this year, he’s the youngest player ever to reach both 100 home runs and 100 steals, and he leads the majors in triples, supposedly the most exciting play in baseball, since his rookie year.

Trout is built like a linebacker but runs like a wide receiver, and forgive me for another cross-sport comparison, but I need some frame of reference and at some point it becomes tiresome to keep invoking the sacred names of Mantle and Mays.

His swing, meanwhile, is less a thing of pure beauty than it is a model of efficiency. There is no wasted motion, no menacing Gary Sheffield flaps or circling Kevin Youkilis flourishes. If Griffey conducted symphonies with his sweet uppercut swing, Trout bangs a gong with a single bludgeoning stroke.

There is no perceived weakness in Trout’s game that sparks daily discussion; he won’t be the topic of debate on “First Take” or the subject of a weekly column because, as hard as I may try here, there are only so many ways to say a player continues to hit .300 with a host of home runs.

But nor is there a single enduring image that encapsulates Trout’s greatness; to truly appreciate him, I can’t just watch his at-bats but need to tune in every time he’s in the field or on base as well. Players like Harper have a high Q rating because they generate disagreements, but Trout just inspires a uniform sense of approval. Think of how older fans now reminisce about Mantle and Mays; that’s the sentiment Trout might spark in my generation in a few decades.

And all this exaltation for a player a few weeks shy of his 24^th birthday. Trout was the second-youngest player on the AL All-Star roster last week; in the past two seasons, 37 players have received Rookie of the Year votes, and 35 are older than Trout.

Barring injury (I’m knocking on all the wood in the Louisville Slugger factory just typing that), we should be able to enjoy Mantle’s modern incarnation for years to come. Let’s just make sure we’re all watching—and appreciating—it while we can.