Why is Jackie Robinson in the HOF?

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by Rookiemonster

I was referring to his sprinting time .
Bolt would have beaten American Thomas Burke, the first gold medalist ever, by more nearly 20 meters, or over 60 feet. Jesse Owens? About 21 feet behind.a in 1913 and died in Arizona in 1980 was the most impressive athlete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He won 4 gold medals (100m, 200m, 4x100m and Long jump) and crushed the myth of Aryan supremacy in front of Hitler and the entire Nazi regime. One year before, at the 1935 Big Ten track, he managed to set three world records and tie another one in less than an hour.
Carl Lewis, also born in Alabama in 1961 was the first athlete to equal Owens record in a single Olympics: in 1984 he won 4 gold medals (100m, 200m, 4x100m and Long Jump). He was able to win gold medals in 4 different Olympics, for a total of 9 golds in his carreer. During his career he set world records in 100m, 4x100m and 4x200m and he is still holding the world record for indoor long jump (established in 1984).
Usain Bolt, born in Sherwood Content (Jamaica) in 1986 is the first athlete ever to hold both 100m and 200m world records since fully automatic time measurement became mandatory in 1977. He is currently holding 3 world records (100m, 200m and 4x100m). He is the first athlete to win 6 golds medal in sprint (Carl Lewis won 5 in sprint and 4 in Long jump). Not only did he break records, but he did it by large margins. For example, in 2009 he broke his own world record of 100m (from 9.69 to 9.58, the highest margin since the start of fully automatic time measurements).

Sprint times and track and field performances generally improve over time for a host of reasons. Take Usain Bolt at birth and project him back to the 1930s and he does not run these times, he is competing with Jesse Owens.

[bn2cardz]

Another interesting stat that sums up how good he was:

If you take the cumulative WAR/pos and divide by the number of years they played to get their WARpos average. Only 11 players have an average above 6, J.Robinson ranks 9th with a 6.15 .

Rk Name WARpos/years
1 Babe Ruth HOF 7.414
2 Willie Mays HOF 7.100
3 Lou Gehrig HOF 6.612
4 Ted Williams HOF 6.479
5 Ty Cobb HOF 6.292
6 Honus Wagner HOF 6.238
7 Hank Aaron HOF 6.200
8 Jackie Robinson HOF 6.150
9 Mickey Mantle HOF 6.094
10 Tris Speaker HOF 6.077
11 Joe DiMaggio HOF 6.008

...but of course if you want to stick with your "charity" argument because he didn't hit any of the 3 "magic number" milestones than nothing can convince you and aren't really interested in a real conversation.

[tschock]

Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth

Sprint times and track and field performances generally improve over time for a host of reasons. Take Usain Bolt at birth and project him back to the 1930s and he does not run these times, he is competing with Jesse Owens.

Training, conditioning, coaching, performance monitoring, equipment, etc etc have changed, which gets to your point of either needing to grow up in the same era for comparison. Just as with any sport.

Although... since there was no global warming back in the '30s, Jesse's times might have been artificially quicker due to less friction from the cooler air.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by tschock

Training, conditioning, coaching, performance monitoring, equipment, etc etc have changed, which gets to your point of either needing to grow up in the same era for comparison. Just as with any sport.

Although... since there was no global warming back in the '30s, Jesse's times might have been artificially quicker due to less friction from the cooler air.

Probably true for all sports, but IMO most true for track and field where the performance is objectively measured in terms of time, distance, or height and there is no element of subjectivity.