Baseball and basketball have also benefited greatly from the spread of the sport internationally.
I looked at a favorite team from my youth, the 1983 World Series Champion Baltimore Orioles. Of the field players who appeared in 50 or more games, there was only one foreign player, Leo Hernandez, and he appeared in 64 games. The most prominent foreign player was starter Dennis Hernandez. No other foreign player was on the pitching staff.
Half right. There’s an old story about Jack Nicklaus using old clubs to hit modern balls and not losing much. This article from Luke Donald would seem to agree. It’s not the club, it’s the balls.
So has tennis. Half a century ago it was largely dominated by Americans and Australians, and particularly since the amateur requirements were eliminated, it’s become much more global.
I’ve no doubt you’re right, I just didn’t want to tell runner pat to play with his grandad’s balls.
With soccer there have been lots of advances in ball and boot technology, which have had a signifcant impact on the game. For example I don’t think a player like David Beckham could’ve existed much earlier than he did. Also player fitness has become much more importnat, even within the last decade. That said a player like Ryan Giggs who made his debut at Man Utd in 1991 still players for them at the moment.
I think it would be interesting to see how someone like Stanley Matthews, who played from 1932-1965 (so saw a fair amount of advancement himself) would fair in todays game.
To refer to Lisiate and Duke, Bradman , before he died (obviously), stated that he thought he would still have scored as heavily although it would have taken him longer. I guess that would be due to greater athleticism in fielders and also less overs bowled in a day.
I have been watching cricket for a long time and I really believe that the players of yesteryear were every bit as good as today. The batting stats these days are a fallacy- everything is tilted in favour of the batsman. I would like to see todays batsmen facing Wes Hall or Jeff Thomson on a fast wicket without helmets.
The top players exhibited much stronger fundamentals than they do now, and worked together better as a team. I can’t watch the current edition of the NBA with its horribly disjointed and selfish play.
I’m not sure the entertainment value of baseball is any better, but some changes are immediately obvious to old guys like me. When I was a teenager, in the Seventies, every team had one or two very muscular guys, along with some scrawny guys (like Mark Belanger), some fat guys (Greg Luzinski or Terry Forster), some tiny guys (Freddie Patek). Today, EVERYBODY is working out in the weight room, and EVERYBODY looks stronger than they used to.
In the Seventies, a shortstop or 2nd baseman could bat .240 and keep a starting job, so long as he was a good glove man. Today, teams expect offensive production from shortstops and 2nd basemen, too. Which means you just don’t see as many weak sisters in the lineup any more. A pitcher today rarely gets to face 3 lousy hitters in a row at the bottom of the batting order.
The guys at the top of the lineups in the Seventies were every bit as good as the best of today. What’s changed is, the guys batting 7-8-9 are a LOT better than they were a generation ago. Pitchers now just don’t get to relax once they’re past the heart of the batting order.
I mean, ask pitchers “Would you rather pitch to Gene Michael or to Alex Rodriguez? To Horace Clarke or to Robinson Cano?”
I think the mega stars of the NBA 30 years ago had as much athletic ability as the stars of today’s NBA. Would Bird, Magic, Kareem, and Dr. J be all stars today? I think they would.
As for baseball, it’s not even close. Today’s hitters and pitchers are lightyears beyond where they were 20 or 30 years ago. Lineups are much better, top to bottom. Pitchers today have mastered pitches that were still relatively new back then (e.g. the splitter).
I’m pretty sure this is baloney. Just two years ago, league-wide three-point shooting percentages was at an all-time high. The NBA is also the best league in the world in terms of FT percentage.
There may be a perception of more individual play, which may be accurate. I would attribute this to an increase in athleticism; there are more dynamic players right now who can beat their defenders off the dribble. 30 years ago it was necessary to run more pick-and-rolls to get to the rim unimpeded. But I think most people would agree that if you can beat your guy off the dribble and get to the rim for a layup, that’s a smart basketball play.
I know you said “athlete”, but if you’ll accept “a game in which professionals compete in tournaments for fame and fortune,” I’m going to be ‘that guy’ and nominate chess. If you put Anderssen, Morphy, Capablanca, and Steinitz on a modern team against Carlsen, Kasparov, Karpov, and Topalov, I think the former would stand a chance. The historical players would certainly crush any team fielded from chess’s lower levels.
Of course, all the modern grandmasters have studied those four gentlemen’s games extensively, so you’d have to wipe their memory of the games as a necessary part of your time travel experiment.
It’d be bloody carnage, literally.
Commiserations on the 47 all out by the way. I hear at one stage your guys were 21 for 9 and challenging New Zealand’s all time record of 26. The craziest thing is the Aussies will still probably win.
Could you define what fundamentals you’re talking about? I don’t want to be uncharitable but it always seems to me that when people decry “the fundamentals” what they really mean is just that they don’t like how different the NBA is from their backyard games, but those aren’t the same things. Like do you think Ray Allen’s jumper, Chris Paul’s post entries and Tim Duncan’s post footwork are actually technically inferior to Jerry West’s, Bob Cousy’s and Wilt’s? Or do you just not like watching players attacking the basket and complaining about fouls and having tattoos and TV specials?
I’d suggest that maybe your objection isn’t really about the level of play. If it is, I’ll argue with you all day, but if all you really mean is you don’t like it, then I’ve got nothing to take issue with. It seems crazy to me that you don’t see the modern players as being unbelievably proficient at basic skills. Even as an extremely marginal player whose name probably never passed the lips of a single D-I coach, I drilled through thousands of repetitions to make tiny adjustments, and so did the people I played against. If I’d gotten to the NBA level, I’d have been through thousands more hours with even better and more precise instruction. I’d just also be way bigger and faster and just better.
Did you know there’s an entire cottage industry in teaching young players the specific individual sequences that the pros use to do their moves? Like dance instruction, basically, but for basketball. It just seems absurd to me that guys who are so good that a half-second move needs to be broken into components and practiced to be understood are still subject to criticism on the grounds that they’re sloppy or unsound. But I wonder if you were watching a game and saw Chris Paul actually doing one of those moves, if you would dismiss it as some freelance look-at-me playground bullshit, even though all he’s doing is drawing 4 defenders and getting his teammate a good shot.
But by the common definition of “athletic” this is unsupportable, which is what I was trying to say before. Are you saying those guys were as strong and as fast and could jump as high as players today?
Okay-it’s actually teamwork (or lack thereof) that I decry. It seemed like the best 80’s teams were much more willing to work together, and while individual play was common even back then, the Lakers and Celtics (and even Sixers, when they revamped their roster after 1979) were able to beat other teams precisely because of how they meshed as a unit. I go and watch a “top” team from today, and it seems like there’s absolutely no comparison, offenses are run in a much more basic and even clumsy fashion. On that basis I think those 80’s teams would stand a chance against modern lineups which lack this kind of chemistry.
It is interesting to hear about Jack Nicklaus and the old clubs. I hadn’t really thought about current athletes playing with old school equipment as another way to compare the playing field.
Based on the discussion, we need a new polling method- one with sliding bars in order to compare the range and diversity of beliefs.
I could’ve sworn I heard people saying the same thing about this year’s Mavericks team (and the Bulls and Thunder). Is there a way to compare assist percentages or something like that?
Yeah, pretty much, I think NBA stars of the past had similar abilities to run, jump, shoot and pass to today’s stars. There is, however, probably more speed training to improve explosiveness with today’s players.
I think three point shooting is a bigger part of the game today than it was 30 years ago, so it stand to reason that you might expect current players to shoot better from that range.
I bet cyclists today couldn’t keep up with cyclists from 5 or 10 years ago. Now that they are cracking down on drugs, you don’t seen as many superman riders.
Barkis, in every way we can measure, people in general have gotten stronger and quicker and better at things over time. There’s no reason to exclude NBA players, even aside from subjective stuff like the dunk contest which ought to be pretty conclusive evidence that people can do things they didn’t used to do. The league shot 24.5% from three point range 30 years ago, and accuracy has steadily increased to just under 36% this past year. I guess at some point I have to admit that I can’t force anyone to agree that obvious things are obvious.
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I could’ve sworn I heard people saying the same thing about this year’s Mavericks team (and the Bulls and Thunder). Is there a way to compare assist percentages or something like that?
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Not really, is my guess. It’s a perfectly moving target. You could point out that last year’s Celtics assisted on well above 60% of their team baskets compared to just under 50% for the 1965 team, or go into a spiel about the complexity of NBA offensive systems compared to the seven plays the Celtics had in their playbook under Red Auerbach, but I imagine you still won’t be addressing the subjective “worked together cohesively” element.