Plumbers
If you were curious, I can confirm with full confidence that Twitter is just as bad for serious baseball discussions today as it was years ago.
I ran into this Not Gaetti tweet the other day:
Of course, Shohei Ohtani is an incredible player, sure.
But my good friend Not Gaetti has a good point here. Ohtani, as good as he is offensively, is nowhere near as dominant as Ruth was. And Ruth was an excellent pitcher as well, though we tend to forget that part.
In fact, when Ruth was purchased by the Yankees in January 1920, he was just as much a pitcher as he was a hitter:
In fact, Ruth probably could have hit even more home runs if the Red Sox had been willing to put him in the lineup every single day in 1919:
And there were rumors in the air that Ruth might also join the Yankees’ pitching staff in 1920:
But the other argument here is the old “plumber” argument.
This argument is something along the lines of saying that all the ballplayers of a certain era of the past were horrible athletes that would never even make the field these days.
Occasionally these arguments are exaggerated to a bizarre extent. For example, you’ll see people who claim that pitchers maxed out at 80 miles per hour or so before World War 2, which is a pretty crazy exaggeration.
If you read Walter Johnson’s Wikipedia page, you’ll see something in there about a 1917 military test indicating that the Big Train could throw a little over 130 feet per second, or around 91 miles per hour. I haven’t been able to find contemporary reporting of that feat. However, I was able to find a similar test that was conducted sometime around 1913 and was reported on in numerous newspapers around the country:
I’m not sure if this test was later repeated, or if Johnson’s speed was simply misreported as the years went by. I do know, however, that Johnson likely could have thrown the ball faster had he been fully warmed up. And I’m also convinced that they called him “The Big Train” because his fastball was faster than the 20th Century Limited.
The more you read about the feats of players of the past, the more you’ll understand that they were quite a bit better than the critics give them credit for. The truth is that baseball was organized and quite popular 110 years ago - probably more popular in those days than today, as a matter of fact. And it simply wasn’t the sort of sport where a guy with no athletic talent at all was going to last long at any level, let alone at the highest level of play.
So here’s to Ruth.
It’s impossible to accurately measure today’s players against yesterday’s players so we can only measure them against the players of their own era. Ruth stands alone in terms of dominance of his era.
Today's players are stronger and faster than ever, but nowhere as dominant v. their peers as Ruth. Players are still chasing his stats 100 years later. Comparison v ones peers is the best way to measure their greatness.