Like him or not, he is the best ever

Question RE: Polo Grounds.

I understand center field was 480+ feet and reported as far as 500 feet. But wasn't the short porch around 255 feet or so. Isn't that a slight advantage for a left-handed batter? Would that at least average out the deep center field dimensions?

 

While we are muddying the waters between generations...

If you were a young great athlete in the 1950s or 1960s you wanted to play baseball. It was the first choice. No questions asked.

Now looking at the other sports and the great athletes that play them or did in the recent past...

Would the hand-eye coordination and the speed of Iverson, Isiah Thomas, Emmitt Smith, Bo Jackson, Reggie Bush make them great lead off hitters?

Would the raw power of a LB or a Charles Barkley have made them great power hitters?

Would Peyton or Ben or Brady be great pitchers?

We don't know because they chose other sports.

I think if baseball still was the #1 sport in America, we would know some of the other pro athletes for their baseball ability and not their current vocation.

That said, Bonds #1, no way.

 

ARod will finish this season with more than 500 home runs. That will leave him roughly 250 homers behind Bonds, and the Yankees third baseman is only 31.

 

Home runs come a a lot harder the older you get.

Just ask Griffey and Frank Thomas.

 

I understand that -- but there was a time that some thought Sosa might get to 700 HR's.

Injuries happen, skills sometimes diminish quickly -- so much can happen between now and then.

And say he finishes with 500 this year -- that leaves him say 260 shy of Bonds (for Math's sake, let's not argue about five or six home runs)..

Assuming he averages 40 home runs a year, he'd still need to do that every year until he is 37 and he'd still be 20 short.

Again, a lot can happen. He appears to have a good shot at it, but I don't think it is a slam dunk.

 

ARod's 31, in the prime of his career, never been injured and plays in a league with the Devil Rays, Orioles, Royals and shrinking ballparks.

I don't think there's anyway he doesn't pass Bonds.

 

That cuts both ways. Yeah, its true that America's best natural athletes used to prefer baseball, whereas now they're more likely to go the football or basketball route. But you forgot to mention the qualifier of "..presuming they're white Americans", which Major League Baseball OVERWHELMINGLY was in the 40s, 50s, and most of the 60s, whereas now the league includes the best from all races from anywhere in the world.

Consider this alternative hypo: How would all of the great baseball talents we've seen the last 30 years who were African-American or from the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Cuba, Panama, Japan etc. have done if they were competing against those doughy white guys from earlier eras? I'm thinking they would've eaten em up, I'm thinking Bonds would've been about the most devastating thing they'd ever seen at the plate. Its undisputable that today's players are physically bigger, stronger, and faster, even without getting America's best bodies.

 

With one notable exception.

Of course, your head and feet don't get significantly larger, either.

 

Buck Weaver and Zagoshe have brought some much-needed perspective to the ongoing debate. The "hallowed records" whining by those foolish enough to believe that different eras in baseball are somehow comparable has become insufferable recently.

The only people who may have cause to say they were cheated by the use of PEDs in recent years are players who have resisted that temptation. That's it. And the fact is that, unlike some quarters of the media, these guys don't seem to be screaming bloody murder about it.

Maybe we should take a cue from the players? You know, the guys who actually compete on the allegedly uneven terms.

 

Best ever? Willie Mays.

Hit 660 home runs at 5-11, 180. Missed two seasons to the war that could have bumped his HR total to 750. The definition of a five-tool player. Best center fielder ever.

Let's see that fat-ass Ruth steal 38 bases and hit 20 triples in the same season.

 

The best player ever is typically the best player of the moment because both the game and the players evolve. Right now, for example, the best all-around player might be ARod. Ten years ago, it was probably Barry. The game and players keep getting better despite whatever you hear from the back-in-the-day crowd. There is no question that there are hundreds of players now who are better than Babe Ruth was at his prime. They play against better competition, too.

A better question might be which player most outperformed the other great players of his era? That player would probably be Babe Ruth, but he gets an asterisk because the game was segregated at the time.

 

Sorry, Buck, all those advantages that Bonds has pale in comparison to the fact that Bonds is playing against the entire universe of baseball talent and Ruth wasn't because baseball deliberately and immorally shut out a vast talent pool. There should be an asterisk in front of every record set before 1947 before we even start talking about asterisking the steroid era.