I still have a hard time calling someone the greatest ever when they never played against the best athletes because an entire segment of the population was banned from playing.

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Mulli is Howard Stern in his prime compared to Haugh.

That's dumb. Ruth played against more great players than any current player does. Baseball and boxing were the only professional sports. Every top American athlete played baseball. If you're going to argue that Ruth didn't have to face Andy Cooper, that's true. But I would argue that today's Andy Cooper is quite likely to be playing some other sport than baseball along with today's Pete Alexander and others. Walter Johnson might have been a pro skateboarder if he were born in 1987 instead of 1887.

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Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

There were dozens of top line players that were excluded that could've replaced a few one time champ like Johnson. Hell, by 1920 John McGraw had lists, if not binders full of them .

Home Run Baker? Three Finger Brown. Tinkers. Evers. Chance? Mythology is all they have or had going.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Tinker is really the only guy in that group that rode to the Hall of Fame on mythology. That isn't the point though. The argument is that Ruth somehow faced watered down competition. It was no more watered down than it is today. Just for different reasons. If you want to argue that from 1950-70 was a golden age, I have no problem with that. The guys that played in that 20 year span undoubtedly faced tougher competition than the players in Ruth's time or the guys today.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Lotsa sacrificial lambs and tomato cans throwing up beachballs in the Negro Leagues. 1/4 black Babe Ruth would smoke the Negro League for 1000 dingers

Iirc, the MLB players had losing records in the lucrative barnstorming winter games vs. Negro leaguers. So much so that Landis tried to outlaw the games to prevent the embarassment.

And fwiw, the reason that baseball is "watered down" now is the usual short sidedness by the owners (which they're exhibiting again now), not to mention three other major sports. Back then they flat out had more bums. And did until Branch Rickey devised the minor leagues.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

While they had their share of scrubs, I doubt Ruth could've endured what the Negro leaguers did and hit nearly as well as Gibson. Or Oscar Charleston. Or Buck Leonard.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Talk about mythology!

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Home Run Baker hit what 13 hrs a season at best? And Landis' preserved edicts, Ruth, Veeck and McGraw's accounts support the record. Not to mention hof writers like Wendell Smith.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

I'm not sure he even hit that many but he lead the league 3 or 4 times.

I just think it's a bad argument to try to diminish Ruth that way. You never hear anyone make the opposite argument- though Nardi sorta did in this thread - that Gibson and Charleston were less than great because they didn't face the white stud pitchers.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Funny thing is that I'd still seriously put Ruth at the top, over Gibson and Mays, certainly when his pitching is considered.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

There were more stud pitchers. It's just a fact. To say Gibson would get 962 HRs in MLB is quite a reach.

Only having to play 154 games, none at night, with good transportation and hotel stays plus guaranteed checks, I'd still bet he'd have finished with many more than 714.

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There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

4x the population in this country than when Ruth played. Factor in no Blacks, Cubans, Ricans, Dominicans, Venezuelans, Mexicans, Koreans, Japanese. Colombians.. The talent pool is ridiculously more talented currently.

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I think Mays is the greatest of all time, probably the all time HR leader if he was in Atlanta instead San Fran.

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I like to read my elders telling stories about their first hand experiences watching Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson.

I'll bring you guys some Werther's for dessert tonight

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

Wikipedia says against major league pitching Gibson had 2 HR in 56 ABs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Gibson#Statistics

Ya know what, let's do this the opposite way.

Let's say Mike Trout was born in 1900. Didn't have the advantage of baseball training growing up like they didn't back then. I think they played stick ball in the alley back then when they were kids. No organized little league.

They don't get the instruction or proper training on how to play the game like they do now. No drugs or proper nutrition advice back then. No such thing as weight lifting back then. No gyms or trainers.

Most of those guys had to have jobs in the off season. They would work at their parents farm or whatever they did. Couldn't hit in the batting cages all off season. They didn't have batting cages back then.

So Mike Trout, as a 20 year old, comes to MLB in 1920.

Is Trout gonna be equal to Ruth in that era. I don't think so.

Bernstein says Babe Ruth would suck in this era. He's wrong. But I think Mike Trout would suck in Babe Ruth's era.

How do you like them apples?

Ruth played organized baseball at 8 years old. All the priests at St Mary's were baseball fiends. So put Mike Trout there.

Fine. Trout still had many more advantages than Ruth in learning the game and becoming great.

Throw Mike Trout in the early 1900s. Ruth would be better than him. That's all I'm saying.

I agree, and I was surprised to hear Joe Orr call this argument dumb. The baseball playing world just contains more people than it did in Ruth's time, even if a smaller percentage of those people are trying baseball.

Can't really decide who was better: Ruth or Gibson. They played against separate competition.

Pre-integration:

Best MLB Hitter: Ruth; pitcher: Mathewson
Negro League hitter: Gibson; pitcher: Paige

Post-integration: Mickey Mantle, Bob Gibson

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Sherman remarked, "Well, Grant, we've had the devil's own day, haven't we?" Grant looked up. "Yes," he replied, followed by a puff. "Yes. Lick 'em tomorrow, though."

Based on Gibson's ABs against MLBers, he'd get about 24 dingers a year. I have no idea what quality of pitchers he was facing but if I was to guess, pretty good. They wouldn't want low level pitching on a barnstorm.

There may be four times the population but there are hundreds of times the number of sports and other pastimes. In Ruth's era, if you were a great athlete you played baseball. That just isn't the case now.

As far as the exploits of the Negro League players, it's mostly Paul Bunyan stuff unsupported by actual records. I'm not making the argument that the best of those players would have been anything but superstars in the major leagues. They certainly would have. And Ruth would have killed it if he had played in the Negro Leagues.

Nobody has any idea how many home runs Josh Gibson actually hit. Hell, there's even argument about how many hits Ty Cobb had and the AL keep relatively meticulous records. When you hear these stories about how such and such guy did against the big leaguers on a barnstorming tour it's like a guy talking about how he saw Tom Floretine undress Mo Cheeks at Chicago State.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I feel like I'm at the barbershop in Coming To America

_________________
O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

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Power is always in the hands of the masses of men. What oppresses the masses is their own ignorance, their own short-sighted selfishness.
- Henry George

Of course, the aforementioned argument would hold...maybe the black pitchers would have been better too with better accommodations, which would've reduced Gibson's output.

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Big advantage for modern day players is travel and accommodations. Everything is first class. Travel even for short distances was terrible in Ruth's era.

I never watched any of these guys play baseball but Ted Williams numbers always amazed me. The fact that he spent 3 years in his mid-twenties in the service took away what would have been even better numbers. Babe Ruth played in a very exclusive time when 1/3 of the league was nicknamed rube and one of the better pitchers had 3 fingers. His number are great but I think that in a different era they would have be slightly less impressive.

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Mulli is Howard Stern in his prime compared to Haugh.

Same thing with DiMaggio. You know, if you take out the Fenway and Yankee Stadium numbers from each guy's stats, there pretty close to the same. In fact, DiMaggio is slightly better.

I think you're way off on Ruth. He played in a tough time against tough men and the difference between him and the next best guy was greater than for anyone else in any team sport in any era.

I do think baseball was at it's best from between the time Robinson broke in up until expansion. In particular, the National League of that era was as good as any baseball league has ever been as they were quicker to accept the black and Latino players.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don