Could you or I have dominated the 1880s?

[boneheadandrube]

For the record, I thought the title of the thread was hilarious when I read it, so I decided to play the devils advocate and "talk of dominating" these guys in a couple posts for fun. For their time these men were certainly the best, and are to be respected as such, but lets not take this too seriously.
I do think that a good common sense analysis of that time vs now is to simply understand that the game, and people physically have both evolved and improved, just as almost anything else has since then. Also, I don't think that statistics or tales from the past are an accurate resource for judging their abilities, but thats what baseball fans use as gospel for these discussions.

GB

[Rookiemonster]

Bottom line men have evolved since then . We are bigger , stronger , faster , smarter , healthier , live longer , we have a longer prime age . It's a joke to compare . They were not raised playing tee ball , little league etc . Don't take the stats they put up to serious . Even well in to the 1900s if you truly think most of those guy would hit off Gibson , Koufax, Spahn your not in touch with reality . ( forget about Ryan , Clemens , Seaver , ) . Just flip the senarios send them in to today's game . They would be laughed off the field . These were not athelites .

[bmarlowe1]

Originally Posted by Rookiemonster

Bottom line men have evolved since then . We are bigger , stronger , faster , smarter , healthier , live longer , we have a longer prime age . It's a joke to compare . They were not raised playing tee ball , little league etc . Don't take the stats they put up to serious . Even well in to the 1900s if you truly think most of those guy would hit off Gibson , Koufax, Spahn your not in touch with reality . ( forget about Ryan , Clemens , Seaver , ) . Just flip the senarios send them in to today's game . They would be laughed off the field . These were not athelites .

Actually, men have not evolved at all. There has been no meaningful genetic change over such a short period of time. Men now are the same as men then. Certainly they are not any smarter.

What has changed is nutrition (though not all for the better), health care and the science behind athletic training and performance. The apparent result of this is an overall rise in the average performance of serious athletes (as evidenced, for example, in track and field results).

Batting averages during the Deadball Era were generally low. However there were huge outliers like Wagner, Cobb, Lajoie. We don’t seem to have outliers like that now because the average guy is better due to the above mentioned factors (BTW - this is not an original thought by me). That does not mean that the very top players now are better than those early outliers. There is no reason to think that these top performing Deadball era outliers (and 19thC outliers as well) would not be top players now.

[Leon]

Obviously the signs of the time affect all players. I am sure there are good athletes on the board and if you are pro-caliber today then I think you probably would have been back then. I was high school caliber. Now I am Sr. (old people) League caliber.... It's all relative (as Mark alluded to).