Perception of pre war baseball players vs other sports
 

We've touched a little on this in part, but to put it more directly.

In baseball, any list of all time greats by any serious fan is going to be dominated by pre-war players: Ruth, Cobb, Gehrig, Wagner, Johnson, Young, Mathewson, and so on and so on.

Football? Not one would make the list for the vast majority of fans, maybe Nagurski in a footnote.

Basketball? Nobody pre-Bill Russell (1956 debut), maybe Mikan in a footnote but not a serious one. And the advent of Black players doesn't explain it, baseball too was lily white until 1947.

Hockey? Maybe a couple of players like Morenz, but the lists are dominated by players starting in the late 40s (M Richard, Howe).

Soccer, has anyone even heard of a pre-war player?

Tennis? Maybe Bill Tilden in a footnote, but otherwise all modern.

I could probably go on.

You could quibble a bit with the above, but it's hard to deny there is a HUGE disparity between baseball and all other sports in terms of the status and stature of pre war players.

Why?

Because baseball was far more developed far earlier than the other major sports and their leagues. The best were centered in the 'major league(s)' for, since the 1870's. Football, basketball, hockey did not have a half century of top levels centralized professionalism. There is a very long history of this centralized talent, the best playing together.

Baseball was also far more popular than any of these and has a more widespread oral tradition of legend.

Baseball has, more than any other sport, remembered its past, paid homage to it, and kept its memory alive. Football and Basketball are more popular now than Baseball, but what percentage of the population can name anyone pre-war for them?

These other sports are also less easily converted into statistics that can be quickly converted into comparisons against the league of their time.

In a playoff post-game show, Frank Thomas laughed about having never heard of Home Run Baker, and they all laughed with him.

I think the only people that know about Hans Lobert, Eddie Collins and Old Eagle Eye are the people that read this board.

People know Aaron Judge and Kris Bryant and Altuve and those guys, just like the other sports.

I was just thinking about this exact topic yesterday. I think the disparity in large part can be explained by how likely it is that collectors believe athletes from that era would fare in today's game in each of their respective sports.

Baseball is quite different from other mainstream sports in that you don't really have to be a great athlete to be a great player. That is to say you don't have to be able to run fast, jump high, have a quick first step, etc. Although it certainly helps. You have to be a good athlete to be a good center fielder, shortstop, or second baseman, but you certainly don't have to be an athlete to be a great pitcher or hitter. Babe Ruth wasn't going to win any foot races, and Bartolo Colon isn't going to be dunking any basketballs anytime soon. Baseball is more about timing, hand-eye coordination, and game theory.

I think this allows us to envision players of the past still performing at least somewhat well in today's game (fairly or unfairly). Whereas with basketball, there isn't a single player from that era who would even start on a 4A high school squad in Los Angeles today. Even George Mikan wouldn't make the NBA today. The game has just changed so much. Basketball requires by far the most athleticism of any of the major sports, and the players from that era simply weren't athletes. Not in comparison to today's players. Anything from before the Wilt & Russell era just feels like an entirely different sport. The same is true with football before black athletes were allowed to play. Particularly with the skill positions. Obviously, for offensive linemen, it doesn't really matter, but the hobby doesn't care about them anyhow.

The perception by most people is that most of the truly great baseball players were in that earlier era. Perception is reality, factually or otherwise.

Nearly every American born male was playing baseball in the pre-war era. Whereas George Mikan was the best in his era, he was only the best of the people who actually played basketball. For you to have earned even the last spot on the last place team in the worst year of the pre-war era you would have had to beat out nearly every other American male in the country for it.

Big difference in skill level relative to era.

I would suggest golf and boxing as counter-examples to your theory. Those sports were way more popular in 1930 than football, basketball, or hockey.

Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney in boxing - just to name a few, would still be considered among the all-time greats.

Ben Hogan, Bobby Jones, Walter Hagen in golf.

The popularity of the sport has more to do with it than anything.

Baseball has done a great job of glorifying its past. Where football is concerned, if it didn't happen before the dawn of the Super Bowl era, it largely doesn't exist for many fans.

As others have said, baseball was in full flower then, football and basketball just getting started. Still, I'd say most football fans have heard of Red Grange, Bronco Nagurski, Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, perhaps a few others. Boxing was also in its prime, so I think the names Joe Louis, Jack Dempsey, Rocky Marciano, and Sugar Ray Robinson would be recognized by most sports fans today. But I couldn't name you a heavyweight or any other champion from the last 20 years. How many golfers wouldn't know Bobby Jones, Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Babe Didrikson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer as greats from the past? As for Home Run Baker, that's not a good example. I'd guess Frank Thomas and the other guys could tell you that Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ty Cobb, Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Joe Dimaggio, and many others were all-time baseball legends.

Certainly the historical popularity of the sport has a lot to do with it.

I also wonder whether rule changes have an impact, in that they fundamentally change the nature of the game. The idea being that sports with fewer changes enjoy more stability, and history seems more relatable.

Certainly changes like adding the 3-point line and the forward pass come to mind in basketball and football that fundamentally altered the game itself.

While baseball has its share of dramatic rule changes, many of them happened a loooooooong time ago, like being able to peg a runner with the ball, or a foul ball not counting as a strike.

It could be that the stasis of the game is not as important as its historical popularity. But I'm inclined to think that it could be a factor that comes into play.

I've never understood why Mikan gets the Rodney Dangerfield treatment. The guy singlehandedly changed the game

I have no love or interest for the sport, but wasn't Mikan named the greatest athlete of the first half of the century at some point? I forget who bestowed the honor, but always questioned how this guy, in a then-fairly unpopular sport, would top a list of players from every professional sport in perhaps the greatest era of athleticism the world has ever known.

I could see Jim Thorpe, but not Mikan.

I could see 100 or more over Mikan, but as I said, basketball is not my interest. And yes, Thorpe would make a great deal of sense. In fact, I'm certain he won a similar award from a different entity, thereby proving the true value of such things. Anyone can award anyone else anything.

Ben Hogan was 1950s, but you make an interesting point.

I think that a big part of it is that while the way the game is played changes back and forth between small ball and home runs over all, the game doesn't really change all that much. How many years were there when hitting 300 was unusual? The only reason for fluctuations in stuff line stolen bases and some other stuff is in how the game is played. Few players are good enough to be allowed to operate outside the sense of "this is how the game is played"
Ruth, Rickey Henderson, Cobb, Ted Williams, could do their own thing because nobody sane would want them to not play their way.

But someone who would be stealing 30-40 bases in a running era might only do 10 -20 in a slugging era.

In other sports, the way the game is played leads to huge changes in individual production.

Fran Tarkenton was great, but because of how the game was played then vs now means you look at his stats and in todays game they appear very average. There are guys being let go that have similar stats to his best year.
Many fans don't look at the over all game, just the raw numbers.
Would guys like Tarkenton and Staubach or the lower passing numbers but more durable/verstaile players from farther back be great today? I think so.

Another change, look at something simple like thousand yard rushers. in 2000, there were more than enough to make a nice set of inserts. 23 of them. 2021? Only 7. I think that's from more platooning and specialization, plus teams getting smarter about not trying to let players get run down from overwork.
But there were only 2 in 1970, and three in 1980 so the changes in how the game is played over even a few decades have made for wildly differing stats.
I figure the big boost around 2000 was the passing game being used more opening things up for better running backs, plus maybe more plays working towards the outside.


Similar things I think are in play with Basketball and hockey.
Like the 92 olympic team was amazing basketball, but even by 96 it became a showcase for "stars" one of whom missed three straight set up tries at a dunk in a blowout of China. The NBA has sort of gone the same way.
Some set pieces to show off, a bunch of three pointers, and a bit of pretty basic stuff in between.

Hockey has been more stable, but the changes have been more stuff like pre or post goalie mask, non-wood sticks, the arrival of European players who play a different and at times less physical game than the NHL was in the 70's.

Soccer, who knows? The way it's played internationally, the teams can move leagues and level of leagues and it seems like there's no set season....

"Baseball is quite different from other mainstream sports in that you don't really have to be a great athlete to be a great player. That is to say you don't have to be able to run fast, jump high, have a quick first step, etc. Although it certainly helps. You have to be a good athlete to be a good center fielder, shortstop, or second baseman, but you certainly don't have to be an athlete to be a great pitcher or hitter. Babe Ruth wasn't going to win any foot races, and Bartolo Colon isn't going to be dunking any basketballs anytime soon. Baseball is more about timing, hand-eye coordination, and game theory."


Agree 100% ---- John Kruk once summed it up perfectly:

"Hey lady, I'm not an athlete, I'm a ball player" ............ :)

This is pretty much the answer. Baseball was the #1 team sport in America for a long time (America's Sport), even if nobody really cared about it anywhere else.

Way more entrenched and way more advanced (comparatively to the modern era) compared the the other burgeoning "team" sports beginning to entertain the country.

College Football was #2, but those guys basically had 2-4 year careers and were promptly forgotten about. The Coaches were more well known then most of the players at that point.

Even the Red Granges and Bronko Nagurski's were more hailed for their college careers then their pro careers. Nagurski was probably more well known during his time as a pro-wrestler, rather then an NFL player.

To me, baseball just hasnt changed that much, so the comparisons are still valid.

I know hockey pretty well, and hockey in the first twenty years was a very different sport. There was no forward passing allowed for a long time. No curved sticks. No goalie masks (not needed, with no forward passes and that equipment, pucks not raised much). But since it was popular and continuously played as the NHL since the 20’s, there is great respect for the “best” of those days as being relevant. And there is a continuous linkage over time from early superstars overlapping with subsequent generations (morenz and shore take you to Dit Clapper then to Richard and Howe and Howe gets to Gretzky!). Baseball has a similar lineage.

Football and Basketball do not have that, so those are really treated with a huge emphasis on modern.

Yet the consensus best college and professional coaches played pre-war, so it's not like IQ or will were lacking back then.

Tarkenton would be getting at least half a dozen roughing the passer calls in every game while throwing to receivers who aren't getting constantly bumped off the line of scrimmage, flattened by safeties as they ran across the middle, and hand-checked by cornerbacks as they ran down the sidelines.

Not a critique of the modern game, just an observation of how different things are.

I don't think there's any question QB's like Tarkenton and Staubach were great, no matter what era they were in.

It's when it comes to guys like Joe Namath, people get kind of over-heated with the over-rated talk. Not because they are comparing him to Tom Brady, Drew Brees and Aaron Rodgers...but to contemporaries like John Hadl and Daryl Lamonica who never got a sniff at the HOF, but who appear to have been objectively better at playing QB then Namath was.

Most 15-year-old fans today are not going to know Eddie Collins, Nap Lajoie, Tris Speaker, Paul Waner, or Cap Anson. That is 15% of the 3000 hit club

They are also not going to know Johnny Unitas, Gale Sayers, Frank Gifford, nor Bob Cousy, Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, and probably not even Stan Musial, Steve Carlton, and Roy Campanella. Time marches on, and our heroes march into the mist.

That's exactly it. I sometimes wonder what those guys could do if they were playing in todays game. I'd would figure they'd but right up with the best of the modern guys.

On the other hand, John Hannah who looked huge in his time was only 6-2 265. Today he'd be a small quick lineman.

I think the direct correlation of the amount of pre war collectables obtainable for pre war baseball greats when comparing other sports explains why very well.

Americans are infatuated with baseball, it's aura and history are far superior for us. Even as other sports have gotten more popular the same feelings of awe did not come with them for us.

Maybe if you asked this question on a European forum you would be surprised how flipped this thought is.

It's always bothered me that star players like Unitas, Berry, Mackey, Starr, Sayers, Jim Brown, Red Grange, Nagurski, Baugh, Tittle, Otto Graham, Don Hutson, etc. don't get any recognition today. Heck, fans today barely even remember Joe Montana and John Elway. :eek:

The NFL and NBA seem to promote only "the here and now". Professional Baseball was popular eons before Football or Basketball, as there was no NFL prior to 1920 and no NBA before 1946. So that explains at least a portion of it.

Was talking to some friends of mine about this and I think its cause baseball is pretty much the same sport as it was 100 years ago and the stats we use are the same. It also helps that some of the major records are held by players of past eras. Football and basketball are pretty different than they were 100 years ago and have and major rule changes in a time that people still remember.

This is it for me - "passing of the torch." Let's focus on the NYY: Babe Ruth, and then Lou Gehrig, followed by Joe D, takes you to Mickey Mantle, and then Thurmon Munson, Bucky Dent and Reggie Jackson, and then Bernie Williams and Derek Jeter & Mo.

And there are villains and good guys. I follow the Reds, and I sure know who I can't stand on the Cubs and Cardinals.

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As has been mentioned, at least once, organized baseball has been around longer and not sure any sport has embraced and celebrated/promoted its past more than baseball. Even the commercialization of the sport, by the regular issuing of baseball cards starting in 1887, indicates the significance the sport had on the public over any other sport.

Yesterday I was killing some time at a local antique mall, one big former store divided up into cubicles. There was one cabinet in the back loaded with 1950s Topps and Bowman, all well-worn and way overpriced. Kept walking, and near the front, another cabinet opened up and two teenagers looking through a stack of 1962 Topps with the seller. These kids gathered a number of the Babe Ruth subset, a Frank Robinson and a Roberto Clemente while I stood there watching. An older gentleman and his wife walked up and looked on as well. The man asked the teens, do you guys know about baseball cards, and these players? Answer: yes, we do, and these 1962 cards are in decent condition and reasonably priced. I was never so amazed. At least these two guys, who looked about 14 or so, know about baseball and the cards.

Trivia question: who was the last goalie allowed to not wear a mask in the NHL?

I had a lot of exposure to hockey in the 70s. Back then hockey players generally looked like guys recruited from a nearby gas station, many of them smoked, and few if any of them looked like they spent a whole lot of time in the gym. Guys today are beasts. Massive studs. Different game and no comparison to the physicality of the players.

One look at star basketball players from the 50s and clear they wouldn't last 10 minutes in today's NBA.

Football players today among the best athletes in existence (other than the really obese guys).

But we can still argue today how good Ted Williams or Walter Johnson would be today. Game hasn't changed like the others have.

Trivia answer: Andy Brown, 1974 Pittsburgh Penguins ... before he jumped to the WHA's Indianapolis Racers.

I think that we forget how much older baseball is then basketball and football. By the 1930’s the game had evolved for 75 years to a form,that while is different then today, is recognizable to today fans. People can still compare the stats of 1930 to the stats of 2020. In the 1930’s football and basketball are just beginning to become the games we see today. The styles of play had almost nothing to do with what we see today. There is nothing to compare with players of today. This is why common fans still talk about Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb but have no idea who Don Hutson or Ed Wachter were.

I would argue that we shouldn’t compare football and basketball in the 1930 to 1930’s baseball, we should compare them to 1870’s baseball. While a lot of us on the board know about players like Lip Pike and Cal McVey, most baseball fans will say who’s that

Good knowledge, and brass balls hanging so low they could block shots.

I will have to mention Ellsworth Vines, a fine prewar tennis star, but Bill Tilden is probably more recognized.

Frank, your depth of knowledge astounds me, only Alex Trebek can appreciate it more than me.

It's definitely the popularity of the sport. I've done research extensively for the last few years on the Pittsburgh Pirates franchise and it's amazing how many teams they had during the 1880s in this country. Every town had teams, big towns had multiple leagues in town. The amount of teams in and around Pittsburgh back then was insane to think about now. Everyone was playing baseball, so you grew up playing baseball against people who grew up playing baseball all of the time. It was the sport to play. By the time the all-time great players who came around like Wagner, Cobb, Ruth, Johnson, Mathewson, the country was already many generations into the sport and everyone played.

Compare it to when you were growing up. I played baseball all of the time, but a lot of my baseball was me improvising on how to play by myself, or with 1-2 people because no one else was around. The only time I played 9 on 9 games was organized little leagues, with 10-12 games a year. Kids in the 1880s were playing so much more baseball than anyone you know. They had no trouble finding games. I was playing Little League from ages 5-16 mostly against kids who probably didn't touch their gloves once between games.

The popularity of the sport in the U.S. right now is at an all-time low, so you're seeing a decline in the talent that I'm sure will continue because it's not getting any better, but go to the Dominican right now and the kids there are basically mimicking the 1880s here. They can get games going whenever they want and they all play all of the time. The overall talent there is going to surpass the U.S. if the popularity of the sport continues to decline here. Most kids here aren't growing up surrounded by kids who play the sport.

I don't think this is true, broadly speaking. It may be true with respect to this forum and the tendencies here to romanticize that era, but I don't think the rest of the sports world has fallen prey to those same delusions. Perhaps most will agree that Ruth is the GOAT, but I don't think you'll find that extended to pretty much anyone else. Maaaaybe Cobb, but certainly not with guys like Wagner, Hornsby, or Gehrig.

I don’t think there’s to much more to cover here, most of which was already said. Baseball was earlier and more developed as a sport yes, and what also keeps old legends alive is trivia. Makes people possibly wonder and look up the player.

I don't think that is true. Bill James has Honus Wagner ranked #2 all time ahead of Willie Mays. Those 4 are all top 10 players all time. However, I don't think there is any doubt that the best era for baseball was 1947-1979. Williams, Musial, Jackie Robinson, Mays, Mantle, Aaron, Clemente, Koufax, Gibson, Seaver, Bench, Schmidt, etc. No other era had that depth of great players.

In the 70s you had football take over as the #1 sport with the Super Bowl, Monday Night Football and great teams in Miami, Pittsburgh, Oakland and Dallas. Then in the 80s, basketball took off with Magic, Bird and Jordan. By the strike in 1994, baseball was clearly the #3 sport after being the national pastime for so long.

This.

You should have seen how Al Arbour blocked shots. He was called the goalies best friend or the second goalie.

He's to busy worrying about those useless supplements he push's on TV.

I have news for you. Gordie Howe would have kicked anybody in the NHL today back into last week. At age 15 he could take 85 pound cement sack's and hold one in each hand at arms length and not drop them. His dad won a few bets on that but you try it. He never touched a weight in his life. Imagine if he did.

I have to beg to differ. You can take any 30 year period between, say, 1900-79, rattle off a list of contemporaneous greats and say the same thing. A lot happens in thirty years, and many legends in every era.

Of course there were guys in amazing shape. But a great many of them weren't amazing athletes at all.

This. For exzmple 1905-1934. Cobb Speaker Wagner Ruth Jackson Lajoie Collins Sisler Hornsby Gehrig Young Mathewson Johnson Alexander Grove shall I continue? That can't rival 47-79?

Wow, that is just not true. You can be in great shape and not an amazing athlete and vice versa. Ruth was overweight or fat most of his career.

In hockey, there were only 6 teams and maybe 20 spots, so you are talking about competing against the 120 best players vs today the top 700 players. Yes, more diverse pool, but the best of these guys were great athletes.

Nutrition and size has changed a lot though, and many early ballplayers in all of these sports were 5’6” and 150 lbs.

You may want to do more research on Ruth if you are going to claim he was overweight most of his career and not just base it off images from the tail end of his career.