On sending an athlete back in time 50 years

In My Humble Opinion
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Imagine that you could send a modern-day athlete 50 years into the past. I think it’s obvious that athletes these days are, by and large, far superior physical specimens than they were 50 years ago. Advances in nutrition and especially training regimens make this so.

So here’s my question: what athlete, if sent back 50 years, would have the greatest impact on their chosen sport? Which modern-day gladiator would most dominate the landscape of the past? Assume that, in addition to transporting the athlete back into the past, today’s set of rules go back too. This allows for you to answer with a premiere modern-day Designated Hitter (in baseball) or Three-Point Shooter (in basketball) or whatever.

I’m really only versant in the three big (American) sports, so I’ll limit my own response to those. In baseball, I think I’ll disqualify any hitter, because almost all of them would still be in the shadow of Babe Ruth. If I didn’t know anything about physics, I’d suggest that The Bambino was actually sent back in time to the early 20th century from the mid 21st century :). As far as pitching, I imagine somebody like Randy Johnson would pretty much dominate the field. And I can’t even begin to imagine how impressed the folks of 1955 would be with a spectacular fielding shortshop. Still, I think The Big Unit… maybe The Big Unit four years ago… would be my choice to send back in time.

For football… geez, it’s such a different game these days. I think a stellar quarterback like Peyton would do pretty well, but he’d only be better than the Norm Van Brocklins and Johnny Unitases; he wouldn’t completely dominate them. A tall receiver in the mold of Randy Moss would be head and shoulders (pun intended) over the receivers of the past. A bruising RB would kick much ass too, but even if defenses were smaller back then, he’d still be tackleable (if I may coin the word). So my choice here is Randy Moss.

In basketball, someone like Michael Jordan (in his prime, if you allow me the minor cheat) or LeBron James would utterly change the layout of the game. I don’t think anybody in 1955 could have defended either of these two. They’d of necessity be double- and triple-teamed, which would send their assists through the roof… and they’d still probably average 20-30 ppg. So I’ll offer LeBron here.

So which do I think would most impact the game – Johnson, Moss, or LeBron? Good question. It’s essentially a three-sided coin flip, so I’ll pick… LeBron.

Your thoughts? I’d especially like to hear some thoughts on sports I don’t know a whole lot about. Someone like Roger Federer would no doubt kick some ass in the tennis world, but I think racket improvements have contributed to his skill. And I think even a mediocre boxer of today could beat someone like Joe Louis, but that’s based more on ignorance than any real knowledge.

So discuss :slight_smile:

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For basketball, I would nominate one of the shooting 7-footers: Kevin Garnett. They’d have no idea how to defend him, since he’s a legit threat from just about everywhere on the floor. He’s a lot faster than most guys his size.

Baseball: definitely the Big Unit. He’s physically imposing, and when you add in the higher mound he’d be unstoppable.

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A really superior cover corner would be dominant as well. A Darrell Green or Deion Sanders (in their respective primes, of course) would shut down an entire side of the field, even moreso than they did when they actually played. So for football I would send back Darrell Green (because I’m a Redskins fan and I hate Deion).

I don’t know much about baseball, but I agree that one of the pitchers we have today would throw no-hitters probably several times a year. So I will also go with Randy Johnson (once again, in his prime).

As for basketball it simply has to be Michael Jordan, although Magic Johnson or Larry Bird would do in a pinch. Anyone from Dream Team '92, really.

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50 years ago was only the 1950’s, and there were some pretty good athletes around - In baseball, Mays and Mantle and Aaron, Basketball (late 50’s) Wilt and Russell and Jerry West, Football had Jim Brown and hockey had a bunch of guys.

Baseball would be the least affected, the game hasn’t developed that much in the last 50 years. Randy Johnson wouldn’t be much (if at all) better than Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson. I can’t think of anyone who would “change the game”. Any of the power hitting middle infielders would freak those old guys out, though. So would Ichiro.

In football, the difference is all size and speed. I think a linebacker like Ray Lewis would blow them away. He’d be the fastest player on the field and maybe the biggest.

Again with size and speed, I’d love to see Peter Forsberg skate against the 50’s guys.

Basketball is the easiest. About 70% of the players in the league today would absolutely dominate in the 50’s. Oscar Robertson might be the only guy back then who could be in the same gym with today’s guards and forwards. A seven-footer who can pass and dribble (Novitski, Duncan) they wouldn’t have a clue how to deal with. Allen Iverson would be breaking kneecaps all across the league with his crossover. LeBron or MJ would most definately change te game.

Something really interesting to see would be Tiger Woods and Ernie Els playing with persimmon drivers and playing on courses that would be considered goattracks today.

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I know how to stop him. Put him in a 4 man rotation for the entire season. No way his back holds up with the medical procedures available 50 years ago.

Apples->oranges.

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Why is it that we have almost no 0.400 batters these days? My guess is that thje pitching is much faster and aggressive today than it was in the days of Babe Ruth (or even Joe DiMaggio). I think that athletes today are much faster and better trained. in babe Ruth’s time, spring training was a few weeks of desultory practice. Trust me, today’s athletes train MUCH harder than those of 50 years ago…and even more so than 70 years ago.

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Lord Ashtar, it would have to be Darrell Green, because even if we sent him back to the 50’s he would still be playing into the 70’s. [/RedskinsFanBoy]

I think you could make a good arguement that Mike Vick based on athletic ability alone would have been a difference maker at any point in football’s history at what ever position they decided on putting him in.

Basketball is an obvious one too: Shaq. Hell, they are still changing the league rules today to accommodate him (Zone defence, Hack-A-Shaq) and he’s been playing for 13 years now.

As far as golf instead of sending a player, can we just send them a couple of bags of modern clubs? I wonder what Byron Nelson’s game would have been like if he was using a Ping driver in his prime? The testing machine they use to certify modern clubs is based off his swing and named after him: Iron Byron.

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How about Michael Vick? He’d be fast enough to outrun the DBs and would be bigger than a lineman on either side of the ball.

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If I was going to send anyone back, I’d send back a basestealer.

Most baseball fans don’t know this, but basestealing in the so-called good old days was a dead art. In 1955, to make it an even fifty years, the entire American League stole just 317 bases, or about 40 a team, and was caught stealing 247 times. The National League was just a little bit more aggressive, but no more successful. No major league player stole more than 25 bases. And that was a typical year. Today, the typical team steals more than twice that many bases, and we’re in a down period right now; in the 1980s, it was common for a league to average well over 100 steals. The 1985 Cardinals stole almost as many bases (314) as the entire 1955 American League.

Catchers at the time generally did not have good arms, and pitchers did not have quick moves, because they weren’t asked to use them; very few players could steal bases at all. It had been that way for many years, with a slight bump up during the wea years. Teams in the 1930s couldn’t steal bases for shit, either. It is worth noting that Jackie Robinson, who played from 1947 to 1956, was FAMOUS for his basestealing, the most feared and aggressive baserunner of his time… and he averaged just 25 steals per year during his full seasons. Today, Carl Crawford could get 25 bags in nine good weeks.

If you sent back a talented basestealer like Juan Pierre or Ichiro Suzuki, they could steal 130-150 bases with ease. (The season record’s 130, of course.) The pitchers and catchers would simply not have the ability to stop them; someone like Pierre or Suzuki could go 140-for-155 and probably cause 25 errors to boot. Just look at what Maury Wills did in 1962, towards the end of the slow era; 104 steals and they only got him 13 times, a sensational ratio.

I’m not sure LeBron could dominate the way you’re suggesting. The game of 1955 was played under different rules, and was specifically easier for big centers, since the lane rules were different and there was no 3-point line to force the defense to pay attention to a nasty double threat like Jordan or James. Today’s basketball players are incredible physical specimens but it’s hard to guess how the rules would change things.

In hockey, I would suggest that goalies today are vastly superior to the goalies of the past. Even giving them the same equipment, today’s goalie plays the position differently at a fundamental level; the sprawling buttefly technique of today’s goalies was unknown 50 years ago, and players of 1955 would be driven insane at seeing seemingly surefire goals get saved. They just did not have the athleticism, flexibility, and technique then that they have now.

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Close but not quite on the mark. We see no .400 hitters because all facets of the game have improved over the last 50 years. Not only do we see no .400 hitters but we see fewer truly terrible hitters (Neifi Perez notwithstanding).

As the average skillset on both sides of the ball have improved we’ve seen a trend towards the mean. Less outliers mean fewers truly standout seasons from either pitchers OR catchers.

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Hrm. Some further philosophizing.

It’s true that pitching AND hitting have come a long way in the last 50 years. But it is also true that pitching made greater strides…moving from ‘art’ to ‘science’ whereas hitting had long been studied and analyzed from a science of motion perspective.

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I don’t think it would work well for a full season with most pitchers. The bullpen system today means that a starting pitcher often won’t go past the sixth or seventh inning in a game unless the pen is full of warm bodies with broken arms. Warren Spahn pitched from 1942 to 1965 and had 382 complete games. Whitey Ford and Lew Burdette pitched from 1950 to 1967 and had 156 and 158 complete games respectively. Randy Johnson has 92 complete games so far and is entering his 18th season. Another problem with sending back a baseball player is if we also send back with him what we know about nutrition and weight training. If we go with someone who just pounds the tar out of the ball, there are any number of people we could send back who would routinely lead the league in several offensive categories, but without modern workout regimens that player’s production might visibly slip. Alex Rodriguez seems to me a player who hasn’t been known for putting on 25 pounds of muscle during an off-season, and he’s also emblematic of a modern trend of increasingly valuable offensive shortstops.

As far as basketball goes, it’s pretty clear that any modern versatile or prototypical center would dominate in the 1950s, considering that neither Wilt Chamberlain nor Bill Russell (both came into the leagye at the end of the decade) was playing in the NBA yet. The only dominant big man I know of in the NBA in 1955 was George Mikan. Even after Chamberlain and Russell came into the league, there weren’t many who could have handled the likes of a Duncan or Garnett or Nowitski, though I think the most dominating would probably be Shaq in his current form because of the different rules on what happened after a foul; my understanding is that Hack-a-Shaq would not work have worked at all in the '50s because you didn’t have to have the player shoot the foul shots. On non-shooting fouls, you could instead opt for taking the ball out-of-bounds, which would basically mean the opposing team would simply be fouling its players out one by one.

In terms of football players, I’d be wary of sending a quarterback or a wide receiver into a time with different game schemes in terms of the rushing vs. passing attempts per game (take a look at Otto Graham’s career for an example of how the game was back then) and different rules for the defense. Johnny Unitas had 47 consecutive games with a TD pass back when pass interference was a different beast from what it is today. On the other hand, someone like Jonathan Ogden, paired with Jim Brown, would run roughshod through the league even moreso than Brown did back in the day. However, Ogden would probably have a hard time playing both ways, something players back 50 years often did. Two other players who would probably rip the game apart would be Lawrence Taylor and LaVar Arrington.

I don’t know a lot about hockey history, but my impression is that athletes, in the past 50 years, have gotten bigger in many sports. I think that taking a big (6’+, 200+ lb), relatively quick defenseman back 50 years would probably have the most impact on the game, so perhaps someone like Scott Stevens or Ray Bourque would do as much to change the game as would a forward.

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Oops. One thing I forgot to mention is that in terms of taking an offensive phenom back to 1955 NBA, scoring in the league was not exactly low. I don’t know where to find the specific statistics for 1955 or '56 or anything like that, but I do very clearly remember seeing that the league average for team scoring in the early '60s was about 120 ppg. So taking back someone who was a jump-shooter would not be quite the culture shock you might otherwise expect.

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IMO, the two major differences between professional sports of 1955 and the professional sports of 2005 is that the athletes of 1955 (as a collective group, but particularly the top athletes) were better versed in the fundamentals of their games, while the athletes of 2005 are generally, as pointed out in the OP, of superior strength, body mass and general physical structure/ability. Barry Bonds could go back fifty years and smash home runs, but his lack of prowess in fielding and place hitting could very well send him to the minors. (Don’t forget, BTW, that there were many fewer teams back then, and that only enough players to fit on–say–10, 15, probably not even 20 teams would make it into a major league.)

Hockey? Wayne Gretszky would do well in the NHL of 1955, because he was a master of all aspects of the game, from shooting to passing to checking, etc.

Professional basketball, IMO, hasn’t seen many ‘fundamentals’ stars of late. Michael Jordan in his prime could go back and whip the 1955 NBA into a frenzy. I’d send Steve Nash back, too, because he’s got star power and is a double threat: every time he touches the ball, you know he can kill you with a spot-on shot or a well-placed pass. I don’t see a lot of guys in the pro game like that.

Football? I agree that the game’s changed so much that many of the game’s modern stars might not really be able to transfer their skills that well. As far as quarterbacks go, I’d send Donovan McNabb, or the player I perceive to be his top protege, Michael Vick. Their ability to go big with a pass or a great run on any play would probably shock NFLers of 1955–hell, it’s 2005 and football is still adjusting to that kind of quarterback skill, I think.

As far as baseball players go, I’d send back Tony Gwynn when he was slimmer. He had an amazing grasp of all aspects of the game, and in his prime he could easily win a batting title and a Golden Glove and be the RBI king in any one season. He would fit well in 1955 Major League Baseball because he wouldn’t be overshadowed by ‘specialist’ home-run hitters like Barry Bonds.
I’d send back Derek Jeter, too. Even though he’s a god-damned Yankee.

Of course, Michael Jordan, Donovan McNabb, Michael Vick, Tony Gwynn and Derek Jeter might very well be turned down by a segregated 1955 America.

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gurk I’ve just been absorbing and refraining from commenting, but as the OP I’ll offer this: let’s just assume segregation – or even discrimination (e.g., getting beaned every time so-and-so came to the plate) – isn’t an issue.

Great discussion so far.

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Whoever you decide to send back can we get film of their first contract negotiation?

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I think Barry Sanders would run circles around the NFL in the 50s. He did it against the athletes in the 90s I see no reason why he wouldn’t destroy the guys in the 50s.

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Oh, I think there are dozens, maybe hundreds of top modern day athletes who’d make mincemeat of the competition that was available decades ago.

If Randy Johnson stepped into a time machine right now, got out in 1927, and pitched to Babe Ruth, I think Curt Schilling put it well: “It would be strike one, strike two, strike three, sit your fat butt down.”

For ONE season, Randy Johnson would be utterly dominant.

The next season, however, would be a VERY different story.

We’ve seen how hard Randy Johnson tries when he’s feelinmg unloved and unappreciated (ask anyone who saw him in his last season at Seattle). Well, think how unloved he’d feel when his team refused to give him a pay raise. Think how unappreciated he’d feel when he had to ride trains from town to town, and when he had to get a “real” job in the off season.

Upon FIRST stepping into the time machine, Johnson would have all the advantages of living and training in the modern era. He’d be biggerand stronger than all the other guys, and he’d mow down all the great hitters with ease.

But after spending months in less-than-luxurious conditions, making substandard wages, wearing itchy wool uniforms in the heat, etc., Johnson’s edge would begin to wear off. And at the end of the season, he’d have to spend monthsl working at an office, unable to pump iron or work out. He’d report to spring training as flabby and un-sharp as everyone else. He’d then get hammered as regularly as every other pitcher of his time.

And he’d be screaming, bawling “PLEEEEEASE, let me go back to where I’m a gazillionaire! PLEEEASE let me go back to where there are air conditioned weight rooms! For God’s sake, Get me out of here!!!”

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When I saw this thread title, my knee-jerk reaction was:

O.J. Simpson!

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In 1954-55, the NBA leader in scoring and rebounding was Neil Johnston of Philadelphia. He scored 22 points a game and averaged 15 rebounds.

The top FG% in the NBA was by Larry Foust of Fort Wayne at 48.7%

That figure won’t even get you in the top 15 anymore.

1954-55 was the first season with the 24-second clock also.