Perception of pre war baseball players vs other sports

[bbcard1]

I think the thing about baseball is that it is plausible or even likely that the best players or the early game (Wagner, Ruth, Johnson, Speaker, etc) would likely be stars today. I remember being a "fly on the wall" with a group of pro football players from the 1950s talking about whether they could compete with the teams of the mid-to-late 80s. There was a bunch of "we were double tough and we'd give them a scrap" Then finally one said, "The would kill us." Their running backs are as big as our lineman were." What's more, today's DLs are unimaginatively huge, strong and run faster than Jim Brown.