1919 Ruth vs 2021 Ohtani

[BobC]

Not so sure dropping a modern day BB player into the game 100 years ago is the equivalent and proper comparison as having that same player being born 120-125 years ago and then growing up during those earlier times, subject to the training and techniques back then, let alone the differences the cultural and economic impact would have on their development. And then lets see how that modern day BB player would then fare playing 100 years ago, if he even played at all.

You guys are looking at just taking someone out of context and dropping them into a completely different situation and expecting a true and proper comparison can ever be made....it can't. Humans over the last few hundred years alone have changed and grown bigger, stronger, and faster due to advances in medicine, nutrition, and even economics. Don't discount things like the industrial revolution and advances in farming allowing for more nutritious food to be mass produced and available for more people than ever before to help in developing those bigger, stronger athletes of today, or the mechanization of society and the change from a formerly agrarian world society affording modern people more freedom and leisure time to play and train for sports now than they ever did in past history. Who's to say if Mike Trout were born 125 years ago if his family situation back then would even allow him time to ever play baseball, or if he had to work to support himself or his family instead. Ballplayers at the top levels back then didn't make the kind of money, relative to everyone else, that they do today. So you didn't have people seeking out and nurtuing young athletic talent like they do today, and put those young people into training regimens at earlier and earlier ages than ever before.

Combine that all with the underlying competetive nature of humans overall and the fact that records and achievements reached 50 or 100 years ago are now looked at and chased by modern athletes who strive to best them and train and practice even harder and more focused than ever just to do that. Those athletes of 50-100 years ago weren't necessarilly motivated or thinking the same way as they were the ones setting those records and achievements that others are now trying to best, or they had already bested those records and achievements set by even earlier athletes, and so could now relax and not necessarily worry and focus on taking their record even higher. Just imagine Ty Cobb growing up after Pete Rose and then setting his sights on besting Rose's all-time hits record.

And there is also the equipment and other intangible factors playing into all this. Balls, bats, gloves, even shoes, uniforms and things like sunglasses impact the way the game is now played. Players 100 years ago didn't have any of these advantages, which even though they may be more subtle, still help out the modern players and their play. And even the way players traveled between games could impact their performances. Back then there were long train rides instead of modern jet flights, and so on.

And lastly, you eventually come to some point where for certain physical, athletic achievements there is a pinnacle the human body can reach, and for some, we've pretty much reached those pinnacles of human performance already. For example, I've read somewhere that based on the human body, the absolute maximum speed someone could ever throw a baseball at was about 110MPH. No current human physiology will ever do that, but instead, you have more players now throwing into the upper 90's and even the 100's than ever before. And while it can be argued that if you took one of these modern pitchers and dropped him into a game 100 years ago, he'd likely blow everyone away.......at first. Don't forget that back then nobody threw baseballs that fast so the hitters of the day were never able to practice hitting against pitchers like that, nor needed to, and adjust accordingly. Its all more relative in baseball than in any other major sport. You take basketball or football, and it is basically about size, strength, and speed. Athletes in those sports from 50-100 years ago wouldn't stand much of a chance against the players in those same sports today, with probably a few exceptions for some of the all-time elite players from back in the day. Baseball though doesn't seem to have the overall glaring differences in the size, speed, and strength of players today versus those of 100 years ago. I'm sure the overall, average BB players of today would be slightly larger than those of 100 years ago, but that difference is more reflective of the fact and difference that the average male of 100 years ago is smaller than the average male of today.

We'll never be able to see any of these switches of players between eras occur to see how they would work out, but that is what makes the discussions so interesting. So maybe the best we can ever do is look at all the advanced analytics and statistics that baseball has available, and use that to compare how well a player performed relative to other players during the era they played in, and use that to compare against how well a player from a different era performed versus other players from his time.