Well, no one really complained about Lebron James, did they? The difference between the NBA and the NHL and MLB is that the latter have a great minor-league development system where teenagers who aren’t yet ready to compete at the highest levels of the game can get real playing team. That way, the Sydney Crosby’s can play where they belong, in the NHL, while the Marian Hossa’s can get valuable experience in the CHL/AHL. Baseball has the same thing with A/AA/AAA.
Basketball is quite a different story. Sure, they have the D-league, but that’s quite new and the level of competition isn’t very high(Pape Sow just domimated during his short stint there, but he hardly touched the floor for the Raptors, one of the worst teams in the league). The push to increase the minimum age was an attempt to force players to go to college for a few years and play NCAA basketball, where they are better able to improve.
They did it; high school players are no longer eligible. And let’s not forget the dress code. Hard to miss the racial issues there. Between “plays the game right” versus “athleticism,” “fundamentals” and the search for the next Larry Bird, race seems to be more at the forefront in basketball these days. Jermaine O’Neal rightly called the league on some of these things, and I wish a few more people had paid attention to it.
They let him get through right before slamming the door. As soon as he was making them money, the high school players were a problem that had to be addresed immediately.
Well, the NHL gets the majority of its players from Canada, Eastern Europe, Scandinavia and the northern US. Those first three do not have large black populations. Even among Canada’s black population, a large proportion of them are recent immigrants who never had a chance to play hockey before. I’m certainly not surprised that first- and second-generation Canadians from warmer climes are more drawn to soccer than hockey. Among blacks in the northern US, they have way more black stars to look up to in the NBA and the NFL, so that’s what they gravitate to.
Relative to the percentage of black players in the NHL, Canada and the northern US might as well be Ethiopia.
First- and second-generation, OK, but by the time O’Ree was called up to the NHL in the 1960s there was a minor league team in Quebec that had established generations-long traditions of consistently fielding NHL-quality black players. No cites, but I remember this from O’Ree’s biography.
Anyway, you can’t seriously tell me with a straight face that maybe two handfuls of young black men with professional athletic skills in the last 50 years have laced up skates instead of cleats? Admittedly I don’t know the numbers for total number of black players who have played in the NHL, but O’Ree was the first in the 60s and I can only think of two black players now, and if that’s the average over the decades then I can’t imagine more than 15, generously, have played in the league.
I agree with this. But it’s a question of balance. [GODWIN ALERT! GODWIN ALERT!] I’m sure there are people who dislike Hitler in part or completely because of the fact that he was German. That would be bigoted. But on balance, Hitler needs to take most of the blame for how people feel about him. (No, I am not saying Bonds is similar to Hitler. Hitler was clearly more media savvy. Plus, he couldn’t hit a curve ball.)
Oh, you don’t need to convince me about how things were in the 60s and 70s. I’ve no illusions.
Georges Laraque. Mike Grier. Ray Emery. Jerome Iginla. Anson Carter. That was just off of the top of my head; I forgot Donald Brashear and Kevin Weekes, among others. According to this, at the end of last season, there were 15 black players on NHL rosters. There are 30 teams and 23 roster spots per team, so that’s about 2.1% of the league. Now, right now blacks make up about 2% of Canada’s population, so I’d say that number is just about right.
This site makes an interesting point that I’m not entirely sure that I buy. It says that in the 50s and 60s there were 6 NHL teams with 120 roster spots. Virtually all of the players were Canadian(in the early 60s there was once American player. Blacks made up 0.1% to 0.2% of the Canadian population, so by the law of averages we should only have seen one or two black players anyway. Like I said, I don’t really buy it, but I thought that I’d throw it out there.
Yep, it answers that it’s suspicion basically. If it’s actually proven that he violated the rules of the sport, then there’s no argument about cheating. While I agree that his statement (which you mentioned above) is also quite suspicious, that’s all it is so far.
On another note, isn’t today’s game a bit different than in Ruth’s day? Aren’t the outfield fences a good bit farther away than when Ruth made his record?
The dead ball era didn’t end “some time before” he retired, it ended quite early in his career. Ruth hit more than eighty percent of his homers after the “Dead ball” era ended.
The rise in home runs really had nothing to do with different baseballs; baseballs were made just the same way in 1925 as they had been made in 1910, and in fact are still made the same way today, more or less. The practice of getting clean baseballs into the game more often certainly helped, but what really caused homers to go up is very simple; More players were trying to hit them.
What Ruth did was make it obvious that hitting home runs, as a strategy, worked. The conventional wisdom had previously been that contact hitting was so important that attempting to hit home runs was a foolish waste, and that what home runs you could hit would be more than offset by useless fly balls and strikeouts. Before 1920 there was some wisdom to this; fielders made many, many more errors today - like, three times as many - and turned fewer double plays, so getting the ball into play was a better idea than it is today, when fielders make very few errors and turn almost one double play a game; in today’s game, striking out really isn’t any worse than any other kind of out, because the fielders are so reliable.
Ruth’s arrival began the process whereby home runs drive out singles. At the elite levels of baseball, the strategy of hitting home runs is usually the optimal one, and the higher the level of baseball the truer that is. Various forces have come along to force the number of home runs down from time to time; the balata ball of the 1940s, the raising of the mound in the 1960s, and huge stadia in the 1970s all made it temporarily harder to hit homers, and thus made contact hitting and basestealing comparatively more valuable. But in the end, the best approach is always to get some big sons of bitches with good batting eyes who will draw walks and hit homers.
If you look at league home runs leaders in Ruth’s early days it it very, very obvious that the conditions of the game were not changing, ot was the approach players took. At first not many other players were hitting homers, but eventually as more players adopted Ruth’s tactic of waiting for a pitch and driving it, the number of players hitting significant homers increased.
Er, no, I can’t, because that is false. The Hall of Fame has been inducting Negro League players since the early 1970s. The latest bunch were second tier guys; all the greatest Negro Leaguers have been in the Hall of Fame for years.
Well, I’d argue that there are times when you don’t want a home run, you want something more like a double. If you’re in the middle of a rally behind more than four runs, for instance. If there’s a man on first with no outs and you hit the homer, you’ve picked up two runs but have cleared the bases. If you get the double, you might be able to drive the runner in all the way from first or you’ve now got men on second and third with no outs and a couple more singles will keep the rally going. But I agree, Ruth basically single-handedly changed the way the game was played, at least for offense. It’s the like difference in DiMaggio’s and Sisler’s hitting streaks. DiMaggio was hitting for power, Sisler was hitting for contact. Not that Sisler wasn’t a great hitter, but that they were playing the game different ways.
I remember reading somewhere that around the early 1920s baseball fabrication transitioned to machines, and the tighter-wound ball made them noticibly more live. My understanding was baseball fabrication went through an evolutionary phase due to this technological change that didn’t resolve until well into the 30s, and even led to differences between ball quality used by the AL and NL. I can’t remember which league it was, but one had balls that reportedly were easier to knock out of the park than others.
Consider me convinced, although you’d think there’d be at least a percentage point or two more from the Upper Midwest.
I could’ve sworn I remembered reading that baseballs were originally made differently, and then the Yankees slipped in baseballs that were easier to hit once Ruth started hitting a lot of homers, they were caught, and MLB decided they’d be better off with the “live” balls anyway.
Well, damn, I believe you and it seems like I’m quite the fountain of sports misinformation today. I saw something on ESPN when the latest bunch were being decided and it was presented like these were the first Negro Leaguers other than the blindingly obvious (Jackie Robinson, Larry Doby etc) to be inducted into the HOF.
That’s what I’ve heard. Now you can’t put a ball in the dirt on the pitch without the ump looking to see how scratched it is. The batter is almost always getting thrown a very white ball with good rebound. They are kept in play after being hit, but there are so many pulled out and fouled out that you don’t get pulpy balls staying in the game for long. Oh, and fielders are often throwing them to kids in the stands just for the good will.
As for the idea expressed that a double could be better than a homer, I just can’t see it. Always take the runs as soon as you can get them. Baserunners on the bench don’t make mistakes and get caught in rundowns, they don’t get into double plays, and they don’t get stranded by a weak grounder, a pop up, and a strikeout.
The mass induction was weird, and I’d see why it would throw people off. I don’t really know why they decided to strike a committee to induct a whole slew of people all at once; I’d never heard anyone suggest there was a terrible dearth of Negro Leaguers, and inducting 17 at once sort of takes away the individual glory for the various inductees. I might be off base though, because I’m not a student of the Negro Leagues.
But these really were the second tier guys, the Tony Perezes and George Kells of the Negro League, whereas the real megastars, guys like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell, had already been long inducted, and deservedly so; the first 10-12 Nego Leaguers inducted were ultra-elite, top-half-of-the-Hall type players, guys who mostly had long careers and were awesome, awesome players.
Their seems to be a lot of myths about Major league Baseballs sneaking into this thread.
It is important to know that official Major League baseballs are still hand stitched with exactly 216 stitches.
What I bolded is what lead to the so-called Juiced Baseball that Ruth so excellently pioneered knocking out off the park. Please note he set the season record in the deadball era while still pitching and playing the outfield.
Jim {sorry, just hate to see misinformation propagated}
Will there be the same kind of outcry about how the distaste for Bonds breaking these records obviates racial issues in this country if and when he breaks Willie Mays’ record?
My hatred for this record breaking has fuck-all to do with race. I want to see Mays keep that record every bit as much as I wanted to see Ruth keep his. Probably more.
As far as I’m concerned McGwire and Sosa never really took Maris’ record, so Bonds couldn’t have passed McGwire with the single season record.
Jesus Christ, isn’t it possible that race has nothing to do with this? I’m sure there are a few people who don’t want to see a black man take Ruth’s record. But, by and large, those of us who are baseball fans are just fucking sick of these steroided beheamoths taking claim to things that are not rightfully theirs.
McGwire didn’t get the same shit as Bonds because he retired quite some time ago, before all of us finally took the wool off our eyes and admitted that yes, these guys did, with absolute certainty, take steroids. If he were playing today, he would be booed as much as Bonds if he were breaking significant records (Giambi ain’t exactly treated nicely outside of Yankee Stadium. If he were chasing down Ruth, it would be just as big a disgrace.) If you haven’t noticed, McGwire has been pretty much absent from baseball, and the spotlight, for years other than his shameful Congressional testimony.
Not sure if you’re referring to me, but I never said anything about stitching, but rather winding, which I heard became a mechanized process around the '20s. Anyway, your cite seems to corroborate my recollection to some extent.
Also, your cite mentions a cotton-poly blend in today’s ball. When did they presumably make the transition from all natural to synthetic fibers? And, do synthetics have any impact on the how live the ball is?
I think you meant to say Henry Aaron. Barry Bonds passed Willie Mays’ 660 HRs which had been 3rd Most and he also passed Mays’ 2,062 runs scored which was only a top ten record.
Not that I am a defender of Barry Bonds on any level but I am not really sure why people put so much damn stock in a book that the Balco janitor could have written. Everyone made such a big deal when Game of Shadows came out but it seems pretty stupid. Since when did people start giving credit to tell-alls of this nature. His wife did not write it and neither did he so I do not really see this as proof of cheating. We know he is on the juice but stop using this as unconditional evidence.
I don’t think this is what people usually mean when they talk about tell-all books. The documentation that the authors put together, using some first-person sources but also a lot of court records and documents, struck me as very impressive and thorough when I read about it. We’re not talking about a Kitty Kelly book here, and as a few of us have noted, Bonds has not contested a word of what is written in it.