Pre War Baseball

How many of Babe Ruth's homeruns came off of pitchers who would not have a prayer of pitching in MLB of today?

How many pitchers from the "whites only" era would fail to make the minor league clubs of today?

Every pre war record should come with a giant asterisks.

On the other hand, they did not have the lighting, field conditions, training technology, or minor league development systems in place. There were only 16 teams instead of 28+.

God bless!

In an interview late in his life Ty Cobb was asked how he would fair against the modern pitchers he responded by saying he would hit about .280. The questioner looked very surprised and said only .280 and Cobb responded by saying yes .280 but I'm 70 years old. The seamless overlapping of eras is the real story of this great sport comparing one generation with another is good barroom debate but I like the way Stratomatic does it wiyh ATG. Bill

Baseball and other sports were not high paying fulltime jobs back then.

The player pool in pre War MLB baseball was at least 100 times smaller. You had to be "white" (whatever that means), the country was small and there were no international players. The player pool of today is probably more than 100 times larger. And yes, they didn't train as hard maybe, which is more to my point. Not many pitchers of that era would even make MLB rosters of today, the Hall of Famers probably but not many more.

BruceF wrote:

On the other hand, they did not have the lighting, field conditions, training technology, or minor league development systems in place. There were only 16 teams instead of 28+.

Amen brother!!! I get so tired of this debate whenever it comes up. It is so hard to compare eras but people who say Old Time ball payers were toothless rubes without any talent assume modern conditions existed in the past. It just makes me appaplectic. So thanks to BruceF for pointing out a few of the hardships Old Time ball players had to face. In addition they used the baseball until it was black and maybe used a dozen a game. The defense played with gloves not much bigger than your hand on mostly poorly manicured all dirt in fields with rocks the size of golf balls. Players left their gloves on the field for the defensive team to trip on. Often playing with one or two umpires led to a lot of cheating. Crappy, smoky train travel. No air conditioning anywhere!!! Not in the club house. Not in the hotel. Nowhere!!! And wool uniforms! Come on everyone has seen the Seinfeld episode about the modern Yankees wearing wool uniforms. I could go on but the Seinfeld episode should be enough.

AMEN and it was the only game in town so any athlete worth anything played baseball . It serves no purpose to diminish the talents of these early pioneers of our game.