Pujols at 2B?

[jnormy]

if i'm facing johan santana, give me ryan theriot over rogers hornsby any day of the week.

Must be the whole "been dead for 45 years" problem ol' Rog has been having lately. Sell high!

[thursday_13]

You really need to enlighten yourself to some baseball history, you are missing out on some good stuff.

The pitching was worse. where do you get your stats about pitching speed? i highly doubt not only that pitchers were as fast back then but i also doubt whatever mechanism they used to clock the speeds. I have read articles stating that pitching speeds averaged in the 70mph range during the first half of last century.

[quote]



umm....huh? I mean...do you really believe that? Seriously. 70mph? I mean, I am pretty sure I can throw my arm out trying but hit the low 70's. Why couldn't the best pitchers of that era throw 90? I mean, who makes a claim like that. There is no way to prove or disprove it. Some of the players in MLB in that time frame were farm boys that came right out of the corn fields in Iowa. They could throw the ball, they had good arm strength. Some of those boys could chuck 250lb hay bails. I assure you Johan Santana can't do that! I'd love to see the source where that came from. (and if someone says Brandon Funston, I'd literally crap my pants laughing.)

and another comment in there, the bigger fields were a huge difference maker! Have any of you researched some of ths distances of places like The Polo Grounds? Center field at the Polo Grounds was 483 ft. I mean, sure, a nice liner to CF could be a double, triple easy. But some current HR's in the bigs are nothing more than extended pop flys. I think we are too quick to brush off these era's because we don't have sexy ESPN clips to watch over and over. There were some real athletes in those eras. The longest HR in history was hit in 1953 by Mantle; estimated at 656 ft.

Why haven't the "superior" athletes of today hit any like that? Because Mantle was a friggin good ball player! And he would have suceeded today. Just as I think Hornsby would have. Bonds said it best when he was talking about roids "they don't make you see the ball better".

All the training, performance enhancers, etc don't amount to anything (see: Juan Rincon, Alex Sanchez, and Jay Gibbons) if you can't hit the ball. I think we need to stop being so arrogant about our era, and realize that guys like Hornsby and Cobb and Gehrig could still play today.

[Slow Pitch]

if there was some way to test who is a better athlete, i'd put down every penny i own on pujols. i'd even say the vast majority of today's players are better than anything the 1920's had to offer. if i'm facing johan santana, give me ryan theriot over rogers hornsby any day of the week.

Just for laughs: When do you consider baseball players becoming the super human players they are today? 1980's, 1990's when??

[knapplc]

if there was some way to test who is a better athlete, i'd put down every penny i own on pujols. i'd even say the vast majority of today's players are better than anything the 1920's had to offer. if i'm facing johan santana, give me ryan theriot over rogers hornsby any day of the week.

Just for laughs: When do you consider baseball players becoming the super human players they are today? 1980's, 1990's when??

Uh... how can you be taking part in this debate if you don't already know the answer to this question? It was July 11, 1984, when Congress passed the Baseball Players Are Way Better Now Act.

Seriously - do some research next time!

[Whisp]

The longest HR in history was hit in 1953 by Mantle; estimated at 656 ft.

you know 656 is bogus. the one guy who made that estimation recently admitted he fabricated it. in fact a lot of the really long home runs from the past are actually fake exaggerated distances.
if you guys want to drool over the past, i guess i can't prevent you from it.

[thursday_13]

if there was some way to test who is a better athlete, i'd put down every penny i own on pujols. i'd even say the vast majority of today's players are better than anything the 1920's had to offer. if i'm facing johan santana, give me ryan theriot over rogers hornsby any day of the week.

Just for laughs: When do you consider baseball players becoming the super human players they are today? 1980's, 1990's when??

Uh... how can you be taking part in this debate if you don't already know the answer to this question? It was July 11, 1984, when Congress passed the Baseball Players Are Way Better Now Act.

Seriously - do some research next time!

Didn't the Players union have that repealed after the strike in 94?