Ohtani or Ruth?

[steve B]

A few thoughts.

I didn't vote. Still undecided, and leaning way toward appreciating both as fantastic players.

On Ruth not having a great fastball - In one of his films he teaches a kid how to throw a knuckleball. That surprised me and in a thread we sort of came to understand that wasn't just an acting thing. Knuckleball pitchers generally don't have great fastballs. Despite todays obsession with speed many great pitchers didn't have amazing fastballs. They were pitchers. The difference is something that gets lost in analytics, which oddly make for better pitchers.

Players being "soft" today? - In some ways yes. Players back in Ruths era were generally paid well compared to regular workers, but still worked in the off season. Sometimes in physically demanding jobs like farming. I forget who said it but one oldtimer said we wouldn't see a lot of complete games until the pool of players once again included a lot of farm kids who'd bring in tons of hay bales then go play a couple games.
I don't see that happening.
How many players were great until so,e now fixable injury put an end to their career? How many more hung on playing hurt making an injury that could have healed into an essentially career ending injury.
Todays guys do take off days for seemingly trivial things. Or things we don't really understand. I used to wonder and gripe about Dwight Evans back spasms, what silliness! Then I had a couple, with my couch potato muscles..... Sorry Dwight, I had no idea. But taking it easy and not doing certain things for a while made mine go away
If an injury the older guys would have played through might take a year or two off someones career, at a few million a year, I totally understand sitting out a game or two. Is playing through an achy knee or shoulder worth 6-10 million or more?

Since I've touched on talent pool.
Now it's international. But... One speaker at the club asked us if we knew how many players were in organized ball now vs say 1940, Apparently at the time the minors and independent leagues were about 17,500 players. in 1940 the estimate was 175,000 but counted the occasionally very competetive industrial and semi pro leagues. He said that he stuck around the majors as long as he did because he was easy about pay and not complaining. Guy who were "difficult" got replaced very quickly. Yes, if you were a Williams or DiMaggio you could be a bit difficult, but a more average player just got replaced.
So I sort of think that Ruth was playing against some pretty good players who had risen to the top of that 175000 person crowd. Balanced against not playing against all the players in the negro leagues.

Different people handle pressure differently. To some a game is just a game, playoffs or not.

Sort of unrelated
Wen I first saw the thing about how many had hit 3 homers in a playoff game it struck me that when I was in High school that number changed from 1 to 2 and stayed there a while.