04-15-2002, 10:00 PM
Face, I understand what you are saying about the ball, and some others said about the bigger parks etc.
My reason for saying that Bonds is better than Ruth:
Bonds is in much better shape than any athlete ever dreamed of in the 20s. No one went to the gym religiously, no had the dietary supplements, flexibility training, hand-eye drills, meticulously studied every pitcher and charted every pitch, no one could keep a video library of all their at bats and notice any little flaw they had, I could go on for hours. Those advantages have made Bonds and many other players for that matter, head and shoulders above what the athletes were like nearly 100 years ago.
The level of competition is much higher than it was back then. Sure everyone talks about expansion, and crappy pitchers. But, while there might be 3x as many players as there were in the 20s to thin out the talent, the talent pool that exists to draw talent out of is larger exponentially. Not only is the population of the US more than doubled, but more people as a whole play the sport. Every kid plays organized baseball since infancy, which very few people had back then. Kids now have a huge head start because of all the teaching and expertise they have been exposed to. And that's just the US. The majors are international now, so while there are 20 more teams than there were when Ruth was around, those teams cherrypick the best players out of millions of players.
Because the competition is better, people play up to the competition and continuously improve. I guarantee Ruth never saw a 100MPH fastball once.
You give Ruth those tools, training, years of much great competition, and neading to adjust his approach for multitudes of different pitches and pitchers, fine maybe he'll even be that much better. But he didn't have them, and that wasn't the question. The debate is who is better Bonds or Ruth.
And Bonds, as his is now, is better than Ruth as he was then.
The best hockey players now are better now than Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe. The best basketball players now are better than Russell, West, and Baylor. It goes for all sports. The breakthroughs in sports medicine, training, scouting, and all that jazz have made today's athletes dominating compared to when the sports began. I've heard Ted Williams say many times that he would have hit .450 if he had todays technology and training
My reason for saying that Bonds is better than Ruth:
Bonds is in much better shape than any athlete ever dreamed of in the 20s. No one went to the gym religiously, no had the dietary supplements, flexibility training, hand-eye drills, meticulously studied every pitcher and charted every pitch, no one could keep a video library of all their at bats and notice any little flaw they had, I could go on for hours. Those advantages have made Bonds and many other players for that matter, head and shoulders above what the athletes were like nearly 100 years ago.
The level of competition is much higher than it was back then. Sure everyone talks about expansion, and crappy pitchers. But, while there might be 3x as many players as there were in the 20s to thin out the talent, the talent pool that exists to draw talent out of is larger exponentially. Not only is the population of the US more than doubled, but more people as a whole play the sport. Every kid plays organized baseball since infancy, which very few people had back then. Kids now have a huge head start because of all the teaching and expertise they have been exposed to. And that's just the US. The majors are international now, so while there are 20 more teams than there were when Ruth was around, those teams cherrypick the best players out of millions of players.
Because the competition is better, people play up to the competition and continuously improve. I guarantee Ruth never saw a 100MPH fastball once.
You give Ruth those tools, training, years of much great competition, and neading to adjust his approach for multitudes of different pitches and pitchers, fine maybe he'll even be that much better. But he didn't have them, and that wasn't the question. The debate is who is better Bonds or Ruth.
And Bonds, as his is now, is better than Ruth as he was then.
The best hockey players now are better now than Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe. The best basketball players now are better than Russell, West, and Baylor. It goes for all sports. The breakthroughs in sports medicine, training, scouting, and all that jazz have made today's athletes dominating compared to when the sports began. I've heard Ted Williams say many times that he would have hit .450 if he had todays technology and training