Posted By:
Eric BrehmTy Cobb facing Randy Johnson would make a great premise for an episode of Twilight Zone. Unfortunately time travel is possible only in the world of fantasy, so we'll never know.
What I would say is, that it is obvious that today's athletes are generally stronger, faster, and more durable than those of years ago. You can see it in the continual progression of performance in Olympic events such as sprinting, distance running, jumping, and so on. Specialized training techniques and technology have advanced as well. Maybe baseball is somehow different; maybe hitting and pitching abilities depend less on pure physical prowess than do the skills required for success in other sports, I don't know. But my feeling is that a team of modern players would pretty much wipe out a team from the deadball era. Walter Johnson could throw 90mph+ fastballs, but could he make the ball move and sink and do all the other crazy things that today's pitchers can?
Anyhow, I think Cobb would be able to hit in today's game, but he wouldn't have anything like the kind of success he had in his own era.