Perception of pre war baseball players vs other sports

[G1911]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

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, maybe Nagurski in a footnote.

Basketball? Nobody pre-Bill Russell (1956 debut), maybe Mikan in a footnote but not a serious one.

Hockey? Maybe a couple of players, 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 in the perception of 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.