Old Timers

[Donn Beach]

Interesting, and second base was a war zone. On the story of Cobb sharpening his spikes

.Later research found that Cobb actually tried to get MLB to require players to dull their spikes and to have umpires inspect them before games.

Now, the game in Cobb’s day was rather different than ours, and getting cuts and scrapes from opposing players’ spikes was just part of a day’s work for a middle infielder. I suspect Cobb gave as well as he got, as he was an intense competitor, but there doesn’t seem to be any non-Stump evidence that he was a dirty player or that he intentionally tried to hurt opposing players

Either way, a player getting spiked today becomes a major controversy

[D-train]

Interesting, and second base was a war zone. On the story of Cobb sharpening his spikes

.Later research found that Cobb actually tried to get MLB to require players to dull their spikes and to have umpires inspect them before games.

Now, the game in Cobb’s day was rather different than ours, and getting cuts and scrapes from opposing players’ spikes was just part of a day’s work for a middle infielder. I suspect Cobb gave as well as he got, as he was an intense competitor, but there doesn’t seem to be any non-Stump evidence that he was a dirty player or that he intentionally tried to hurt opposing players

Either way, a player getting spiked today becomes a major controversy

How about the Ghoulish scenes of Hockey players almost getting decapitated with skate blades.....

[Donn Beach]

Interesting as well, didn't know anything about skate blade issues, they sound pretty lethal.

[Mesully11]

Let's not forget that ballpark dimensions and conditions were much different that they are now.
As far as Ruth goes, he changed the game. Prior to him the best power hitter was a guy named "Home run Baker" because he hit 11 HRs in a season.
Ruth was also an elite pitcher for several years and pitched 6 innings of the first combined perfect game. (The Babe was tossed for slugging the ump).

I think Ruth has 94 wins as a pitcher.

My point is comparing the different eras is apples to oranges.

[D-train]

Interesting as well, didn't know anything about skate blade issues, they sound pretty lethal.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_ ... de+tragedy

[Sexymarinersfan]

Watching some of these old timers play in old clips, it seems pretty obvious that the level of athlete in MLB has improved tenfold.

In the same way that the competition got harder when blacks joined MLB, it makes sense to me that adding the best players from (nearly) every nationality has pushed the level of overall talent much higher.

I don't think 75% of the guys that played alongside the old greats would make it past AA and even some of the greats hardly look like they would make a team now.

It's odd watching some of them, they don't look athletic in the slightest.

Wondering what some of you that actually watched them play think.

Look at some of these dopes. Babe Ruth has one of the ugliest swings I've ever seen. I think he'd get eaten alive by today's pitchers.
https://youtu.be/_EJxVFU8UNo

The level has definitely increased no doubt. But its highly unsustainable, especially for pitchers. Hitters don't crack .300 like they used to either. .285-.290 is the new .300 in today's game.

[Mesully11]

Don't forget that the mound height has been lowered also.
The only thing that has remained the same is blind umps!

[Case_Of_The_Runs]

This is an interesting post. I have long wondered about how fast pitchers threw back in 20's and whether Mike Trout would be teeing off on mid-80's heaters like they were beach balls if he faced them today. But of course it becomes a complete apples and oranges kind of comparison. It's not just that players have changed in 100 years (with coaching, nutrition, metrics, training, equipment and so on) - but the sport has changed. Starting pitchers were expected to go 9 innings. Throwing in the mid-90's was unsustainable that long. Pitchers focused less on K's and more on pitch-to-contact letting their defense do what they were there to do. Differences in ballpark dimensions likely played a role as well as the height of the mound. I'd guess they had fewer pitches to master as well - maybe a fastball and an offspeed instead of forkballs and cutters and splitters and slurves. Besides, how the hell do you measure the speed of fastball without radar?

What is more intriguing to me is why we haven't had a .400 batting average since Ted Williams. And when was the last Triple Crown winner? Why is this feat getting harder?

In my field, there was a prominent paleontologist and essayist named Stephen Jay Gould; he died died about 20 years ago. The dude was freaking off the charts brilliant - I needed thesaurus just to read the shit he wrote. He was also an avid baseball fan (and Yankees fan - a transgression I still have a hard time overlooking). Anyhow, I remember reading an article he wrote called "Entropic Homogeneity Isn’t Why No One Hits .400 Any More” in which he took a statistical approach to answering the question.

If you are interested in his argument, there a really nice, short and accessible summary of the thing here. Sort of seemed relevant to this thread.

https://sabr.org/journal/article/can-st ... -45-years/

[Captain 97]

Walter Johnson had his fastball speed measured at a munitions factory in 1917. They clocked him at 91 MPH. He was considered the hardest thrower of the era.

[Case_Of_The_Runs]

Walter Johnson had his fastball speed measured at a munitions factory in 1917. They clocked him at 91 MPH. He was considered the hardest thrower of the era.

I am super curious how they did that without radar! I don’t disbelieve you - quite the opposite. Maybe they had some egghead with a slide rule and a yardstick?