Forgive me if I misinterpret your response.. Does it means u believe that pro baseball of the 20s didn't possess elite athletes bcuz of their pay, so Ruth's dominance is illegit (?)
My counter: baseball drew the best athletes of that era, football & basketball weren't nearly as popular.. Ruth was that much better than his peers. And working physical, blue collar work in the off-season may seem quaint but I think it bolsters how innately durable they were.. compared to modern players surviving on carefully crafted nutrional, rest, & steroid plans. peace
Baseball didn't attract the best athlete's because the pay was so poor and the proximity to teams for most of America was out of reach seeing as it was mostly in the North Eastern US. Most of the 1923 Yankees were made up of players from that region.
I would say people who played sports in the 20's weren't professional athletes. They were people who were good at playing baseball. They all had other careers to fall back on so having one guy better than the rest was great for the time but I would say half of the athletes at that time were recreationally talented.
It's like hockey in the 80's. Guys smoked, drank heavy and used the preseason/early season to get into shape. That's one of the reasons Gretzky was far ahead of them. Listening to him as a kid and how he processed hockey was on another level and it led him to being far superior than what was the standard at the time. He wasn't superior in physicality but the mental side of the game is where he out performed nearly everyone around him.
As good as Babe Ruth was compared to his peers, his peers were not necessarily worthy of being considered top professional athletes. These guys didn't train like Olympic athletes.
Like Jordan said in the doc when he came into the league his team was full of coke head partiers. It took him a few weeks to be the man.
In the CFL most athletes have off season work and it doesn't mean the are innately durable. They just have to do what they have to do in order to provide and play a game they love.
No hockey player will ever eclipse Gretzky's points record because it is impossible in today's game to have that type of separation talent wise. Everyone is a well oiled machine. Ovechkin is probably one of if not the greatest goal scorer and would have destroyed it in 99's era.
Ruth had great hand eye coordination and excelled. There was probably at least 1 black guy who was as talented but was never allowed to play.
As great as the phonograph was it doesn't compare to a CD in quality.
