Quote:
Originally Posted by rats60
(Post 2012238)
You have 32 NFL teams, 30 NBA teams and 30 MLB teams. The US population increase doesn’t come close to covering that and that doesn’t account for other sports. Baseball was pretty much the only major sport for a long time. The NBA didn’t even exist until after WW2. The NFL was an after thought. Jackie Robinson was a much better football player, in fact baseball was his worst sport at UCLA. Yet he ended up in the BBHOF.
The best athletes are not playing baseball. Athletes may be better, but if the second tier athletes are now the ones playing the game, they are not better than the first tier athletes from a previous era. I remember an interview with Darryl Strawberry and Eric Davis about the Crenshaw HS baseball program in the 80s. They said that it was completely different than when they played a decade earlier. Baseball was no longer cool, the guys who would have played with them were now just playing football or basketball due to specialization.
You are throwing out absolutes like they are facts, they are not. They are your opinion. I disagree with them and that is my opinion. If you want to think Trout is great, fine, but I am not convinced. I have been watching the game for over 50 years and he isn’t close to the best player I have seen. He isn’t close to a 5 tool player. Maybe he can improve and convince me or maybe he declines like the other would be “greats.”
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You may want to look again.
1950...94.5% of the league was white. 1.7% black. 3% Latino.
2016..63.7% white. 6.7% black. 27.4% Latino.
Where did the talent pool come from:
1950 United States population 150 million people to draw from
2016 7.6 Billion.....players are drawn from all over the world now.
Again, if the baseball players are worse now, then why are they taller, running faster, throwing harder, and catching the ball better?
Baseball could expand to three times the amount of teams right now and still be more talented overall than the lore of yesteryear.
Japan itself can add an entire league of teams now as good as 1900-1950 MLB leagues. So could Cuba.
The 1980's is a little different story. That competitive level is closer to today's level. Their talent pool draw is impressively high amount of players as well, but still not as much as now.
You also mentioned that humans haven't evolved, but in 1870 the average height and weight of a MLB player was 68.9 inches and weighed 163 pounds.
The average height now is 74 inches and 207 pounds. And these guys throw better, run faster, and catch it better...they are bigger and MORE athletic.
Like I said before, it isn't really about evolving, although there clearly has been an increase in human size in a short period of time. It is about the vastly higher numbers of population to draw from that dwarfs the players of yesteryear...we are talking billions of more people to draw from.
We could have three MLB leagues, two NBA, and two NFL RIGHT NOW and STILL have a higher overall level of MLB talent now compared to the pre war times.
There a lot of people I know who picked their wives based on size so they could grow a bigger athlete...so you have the selective aspect too.
The WORLD POPULATION in 1900 was 1.6 billion. Baseball only chose from white America.
The WORLD POPULATION in 1950 was 2.5 billion. Baseball only chose from America, and white America 95% of the time.
The WORLD POPULATION in 1980 was 4.43 billion.
The WOLRD POPULATION in 2020 is now 7.8 billion. Baseball chooses from a world wide population from which athletes are bred and trained in their craft so they can make millions of dollars.
Not that hard to see the difference.
