Of the active sluggers in baseball who do you think is the greatest AND CLEANEST?

[dominikk1985]

that's true but there were no latinos either. in the lst decades a ton of great pitchers were latinos.

Also baseball back then was not as professional. I would say the pre ww league was quite weak (and the first after war years even moreso).

this is not to belittle ruths and williams achievements, they were probably the greatest ever though but you have to see their stats in the right context.

on the other hand the leagues of the 60s and 70s were really good. they were fully intergrated and unlike today not weakened by expansion.

 

[hollywood9826]

The videos I have seen of Ted Williams, and all the greats from that era (Mays, Mantle, Dimaggio etc.) lead me to belive that they would have been perfectly fine in todays game.

The Video you watch of Babe is not that great of quality and may have something to do with my opinion. But, when I see the Babe videos it looks like a beer league softball game. He has a real long a loopy swing that simply would not cut it in todays game. And from the stories you read about him he would have put the work in that required him to be a great.

 

[hollywood9826]

Also there are not many blacks, but the oppurtunity is three for aone if he is good enough. nnd look back when BoB iibson was mowing everyone down. 1910s players didnt have to worry about that. I do think that needs consideration.

 

[r2473]

^^Have you ever seen how fast Ruth and those old guys run on those old clips? Baseball players used to be really fast.

RE Blacks: That's why I mentioned above that Ruth never had to face Satchel Paige, so there should be a * next to his records IMO.

 

[dominikk1985]

The videos I have seen of Ted Williams, and all the greats from that era (Mays, Mantle, Dimaggio etc.) lead me to belive that they would have been perfectly fine in todays game.

The Video you watch of Babe is not that great of quality and may have something to do with my opinion. But, when I see the Babe videos it looks like a beer league softball game. He has a real long a loopy swing that simply would not cut it in todays game. And from the stories you read about him he would have put the work in that required him to be a great.

absolutely. Ted is my favorite player and his book the science of hitting was revolutionary. He was not only a great talent but also probably the greatest expert on the swing and hitting. he did nothing but analyzing hitting and probably could have adjusted to any conditions.

the babe was an even greater physical talent but also would have needed more adjustment because of his longer swing which was geared to clobber the weaker pitching of that time.

he could have done that of could but I'm not sure if he really would have. today he probably would have stayed a very good pitcher.

 

[georgerou]

It is apples and oranges. Like golf, PED doping isn't prevalent in basketball. Unless you count weed, alcohol, prostitutes, and McDonald's as PEDs.

You do realize that all sports don't have the same level of PED prevalence, right? Usage of PEDs in cycling and bodybuilding is way more prevalent than baseball. Usage of PEDs in baseball is way more prevalent than basketball or golf or tennis.

I'm more than willing to make comparisons, but to say compare a completely different sport to baseball is not valid. Not when we're talking about performance enhancing drugs.

PED doping isnt prevelant in basketball? You sound like Peter Gammons talking about baseball 10-12 years ago. Just give it time and guys like karl malone, Dwight Howard, Lebron James and many others will be linked to some PEDs. To think basketball is immune is naive.

I know that the different sports have different levels of cheating but baseball was not on the low level. Ken Caminitti and Jose Canseco said that at a minimum it was 60% cheating and more likely in the 75-80% range. Football is probably in that are as well but it seems that no one really cares if they cheat in that sport because none of their records are as important as they are in baseball.