*If cloned and brought up with modern nutrition, facilities, and training. Why? Because the classic answer is you can’t compare a Babe Ruth with a slugger of 2013 or even 1980. Too much has changed in sport, and too much has improved in conditioning.
So for the sake of the hypothetical, if athlete X was cloned, brought up in modern sports training, would they still dominate the sport they ruled back in the day? Wild assed guesses welcome. Who go you think could still rule?
Bill Tilden and Babe Didriksen Zaharias for sure (and she would have been tabloid fodder due to her behavior; wowzers, she was one unlikable person!).
Abebe Bikila was unknown until 1960, but IMNSHO he was the greatest marathon runner ever. Is that close enough?
And don’t forget Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, either. Gertrude Ederle too; at one point, she had the record for the fastest English Channel crossing for either men or women.
Jim Thorpe was so good at everything he tried. I have to think that if given modern training and conditioning he would still be a stand out.
Good call on Thorpe. When I started this thread, I was thinking of Jim Brown - although he misses the timeline cut off a bit.
I’d be very interested in how Jack Johnson would stack up.
Ruth was a hard-throwing pitcher with almost unhittable stuff who also could wallop the shit out of a ball. With training facilities he’d make Mark McGwire look like Rex Hudler. He is the best answer to this question.
I’m not sure where this rumor comes from. Ruth was an above-average pitcher for the time - but he wasn’t unhittable. He had a 1.11 K:BB ratio - terrible by today’s standards. His lifetime 122 ERA+ doesn’t really stand out. He’d most certainly be an exclusive hitter, pitching only in 15+ inning games where the bullpen has been expended.
I think Lou Thesz would do well in MMA under these conditions.
Jesse Owens in the LJ. His Ohio State school record from 1935 was only recently broken. His WR from 1935 of 8.13m (26 feet, 8.25 inches) would be competitive these days. Last year’s Olympic bronze was won in 8.12m.
Ed “Strangler” Lewis as well, Lou’s mentor. These guys had to use real skill to make sure an upstart wouldn’t stray from the plan.
Ty Cobb is an interesting case to consider. He couldn’t get away with a lot of things he did back then in modern baseball, and it’s hard to say if he could have been any better a player even with modern training.
Another interesting case to consider is George Mikan. His dominance in the 40s changed the NBA rules. He was a big man, 6’10" and heavily built. I think he would be head to head competition with Shaq in modern times.
Most 18th-19th century prize-fighters.
Ben Hogan (with a disclaimer)
With modern technology, including ball, clubs, agronomy, computer swing analysis.and video-tape he would be unbeatable.
or a total head case (in the case of video tape).
Got a source for the story behind that comment? While I’ve often heard that she broke the mold and expectations for her time, I hadn’t heard the “unlikable” part.
ETA: notfrommensa - I would offer that golf is probably the one sport where almost all of the greats from the past would fit the OP. Nicklaus made a comment about it - talking about using some clubs he had from the early 70s and a modern ball and only being 5-10 yards short of where he was hitting them back then even though he was then 30-40 years older.
Mikan played at 245 pounds. Shaq played between 325 and 350. I don’t think that he’d stand a chance.
I’d consider some of the harder throwing pitchers - Walter Johnson, Bob Feller, as potential era jumpers.
If he had modern nutrition, facilities, and training, as specified in the OP, Mikan probably would have bulked up closer to Shaq’s size.
I’m going to just agree to disagree here. I’ve not seen footage of Mikan playing, so I have no real frame of reference other than the printed word. It’s more likely that he would’ve been playing the 4 instead of the 5 in today’s game anyway.
Considering how much better Babe Ruth was than most of his contemporaries, I’m sure he’d be phenomenal with modern training and nutrition.
When he hit 54 home runs in 1920 to set the record for most home runs in a season, breaking the previous record of 29(set by himself), the guy who came in second hit just 19, the guy who came in third hit just 17, and the guy who came in fourth hit just 14.
So, he outhit he combined total of the people who came in second, third and fourth.
In 1921, he broke the record again by hitting 59 home runs while the guys who came in second and third only hit 24 each.
Hell, in 1927 when he hit 60 to set the record which wouldn’t be broken till Maris in 1961, yes, Lou Gehrig came in second with 47, but the guy who came in third only hit 18.
You compare those numbers to when Maris, McGuire and of course Bonds set their records and you see a really dramatic difference.
For that matter, even though he lived in an era when most players were washed up at 30, and lost the first 4 years of his career to being a pitch he managed to hit 40 or more home runs in a season 11 seasons, a record that no one else, even with all their conditioning, nutrition, and steroids has come close to.
So yeah, if he’d had access to modern training, conditioning techniques and nutrition as well as playing with the lighter bats of the modern era, a time when pitchers couldn’t throw spitballs, people didn’t use the same baseball throughout the game, you could wear helmets and probably a thousand other things, he’d have been phenomenal in the modern era.
Oh, Bronco Nagurski is another guy, along with Jack Johnson who’d have been nuts in today’s era.
If by some kind of magic reincarnation, you could bring the 1941 versions of Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio back today they would be the two thirds of the AL All Star starting outfield on Tuesday. And that’s without modern nutrition, facilities, and training.
And a 1938 version of Joe Louis would need no modern anything to beat either Klitschko brother tomorrow night.
Maybe. The flip side is that Ruth was lazy and gluttonous; he might be great, but he might also end up like Mo Vaughn or Greg Luzinski or a lot of guys. The thing to bear in mind about modern training is that you actually have to make use of it; it favours harder working athletes, and Ruth was not that.
I would be more inclined to pick a ballplayer from before 1955 who was great but also unusually athletic and hardworking, like Honus Wagner, Tris Speaker, or Oscar Charleston. I’d be more trusting that they’d hit the weight room and lay off the piza.
Well, for every advantage, there’s a disadvantage. Babe Ruth quite literally never saw a split fingered fastball, probably never saw a true slider, and would probably have seen fastballs twice as often as hitters do today. He also never had to face a black player.
There’s very little doubt that baseball today is of vastly higher quality than it was in Babe Ruth’s day. That’s not to say Ruth wouldn’t adapt, of course he would have. But there are way more people LIKE Ruth now. What was unusual about Ruth was not that he was so much better than his peers, but that he was different. He was the first talented hitter to hit to way modern hitters hit, by watching a lot of pitches (he struck out a LOT for a player of that time) and trying to hit home runs. He simply refused to take the at-the-time accepted approach to hitting, instead choosing his own path, and whaddya know, it worked, so everyone started copying him. If you watch his swing, it looks much more like a swing from 1997 than 1927; like a modern batter he keeps his weight on his back foot, holding his hands back, and then moves his legs, then his hips, and only then his arms. Players at the time usually threw their arms in front to make contact.
If you brought Ruth to today’s game what you’d be struck by is how quickly he would fit in. Ruth was, basically, a 2000s player in the 1920s. He was ahead of his time. If you put him in the game today, he wouldn’t be ahead of his time anymore, he’d be in it. He’d be like David Ortiz if Ortiz was athletic enough to play the outfield.
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He had a 1.11 K:BB ratio - terrible by today’s standards. His lifetime 122 ERA+ doesn’t really stand out.
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Ruth’s K/W ratio was normal for a pitcher in THOSE times, though. K-W ratios were very different because the hitters not named Babe Ruth exerted a lot of effort on not striking out. In 1918 and 1920 there were actually more walks than strikeouts in the AL. Ruth pitching today would not be facing the same type of hitters.
Ruth really was a terrific pitcher. He was one of the five best pitchers in the American League in 1916 and 1917, and in 1918 only pitched half a season and was still awfully good. His pitching, predictably, worsened as he started playing a lot of outfield.
I wonder if pre-1955 Mickey Mantle’s knees would be better now with modern orthopedics?
Ditto for Pete Reiser and padding on outfield walls.
I’ll take Willie Mays in any era.