Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
It seems apparent that like every other human athletic endeavor, baseball has evolved and on an absolute level, all things being equal, today's players are "better." Perhaps the disparity is a little less than in track and field etc. because a great deal of skill is involved in baseball that is somewhat distinct from pure athleticism, but I don't think there's any denying the part that involves athleticism.
I guess to me it's an obvious point but one that doesn't really detract from the players of the past, if one evaluates them on a relative, era-neutral basis which I think is legitimate. I don't really care if Lefty Grove as he was then would be mediocre if fast forwarded 8 decades. It's meaningless.
A fair question is why some people seem to have such a nostalgia bias that they resist the arguments about advances in athleticism, and seem to think baseball is immune from that.
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I can fully appreciate the nostalgic aspect and relative value of players like Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and others. There's a distinct beauty to the early years of baseball that will almost assuredly never return. There's something special about how Ruth changed the game and became the icon he did. After all, it's why I collect vintage cards, and why every set I own or am chasing is from well before I was ever even born.
The part I have difficulty with is it seems that many people in this thread, and elsewhere on this forum, appear to be operating under the delusion that not only were those players incredible relative to their own eras, but that they would still be elite today. And some even take it a step further with claims that these early players were somehow actually better as if baseball talent has somehow magically devolved in the modern era. This is of course purely delusional. If people wish to believe in fantasies, who am I to rob them? But if you want to have an honest conversation about who the "better" player was, Randy Johnson or Walter Johnson, it's a borderline laughable comparison. Walter Johnson might not have even made the league today, let alone be a star (though I'd like to believe he would have at least made a roster). That's how much baseball has evolved since he was pitching. That's the reality. Now if we instead ask the question of "who was the best lefty relative to their peers?", then we can begin to formulate arguments that include guys like Lefty Grove (and Warren Spahn still doesn't even enter into the conversation at that, in my opinion, unless we again change the question to, "who provided the most cumulative career value relative to their peers?"). But this discussion is about who was the best in the absolute sense. And in that sense, you're completely delusional if you think Lefty Grove would outpitch Randy Johnson in some sort of fictional pitch-off competition. Yet there is no shortage of people here who actually believe just that. This is why I, and others, push back. If you want to rephrase the question in the OP to one that is more interesting to you, then go ahead and ask a different question. But as stated, the question is simple. Who was the best? You lawyers can try to start twisting around definitions of basic words like "best", pretending as if it's actually ambiguous here, or as if it could be redefined in the context of cumulative career value relative to one's peers or some such nonsense. But none of those qualifiers were posed in the original question in this thread. So you don't get to add them and redefine what best means. Everyone knows what it means to be the best. The best basketball player to ever play is not some guy who was above average for 40 years, or some guy who absolutely dominated against a bunch of 6 foot tall white dudes who shot 35% from the field launching "jump shots" with two hands. The best sprinter of all time is not some guy who beat his peers by the largest gap, it's the guy with the fastest time ever recorded. Michael Phelps is the best swimmer of all time because he has more gold medals and world records than anytime else, regardless of whether or not some other swimmer may have a larger total trophy shelf adorned with enough bronze to make 14 statutes of David. And the best pie of all time is not rhubarb, it is clearly pumpkin.
If you guys want to have a different discussion, then I suggest phrasing it as such. But only a lawyer could pretend that 'best' actually means something other than best or that "it depends on what the definition of the word 'is' is."