Which sport has had the current level of play the longest?

[Munch]

@astorian

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.

May I present to you the 2011 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals’ potent middle infield of Skip Schumaker and Ryan Theriot (with the occasional Nick Punto and Raphael Furcal thrown in for good measure):

Rk	Pos		         PA	AB	R	HR	RBI	SB	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
3	2B	Skip Schumaker*	400	367	34	2	38	0	0.283	0.333	0.351	0.685
4	SS	Ryan Theriot	483	442	46	1	47	4	0.271	0.321	0.342	0.662
12	SS	Rafael Furcal#	217	196	29	7	16	4	0.255	0.316	0.418	0.735
13	2B	Nick Punto#	166	133	21	1	20	1	0.278	0.388	0.421	0.809

[littlespeedysuperbike]

A match between the '60s Celtics and a modern team wouldn’t be close.

The Celtics would run them out of the arena! That the ‘05-07 Suns didn’t win a title obscures how difficult it was for NBA teams to match up with a team whose offensive pace was a few percent faster than theirs; the Celtics ran 120-130 possessions per game compared to an 80-90 possession game now. One versus one, one play at a time, a modern swingman would be able to get ahead in his matchup with John Havlicek - for about a quarter until they realized they had just sprinted the first six miles of a marathon. Most 7’+/250#+ centers would look forward to the 6’10/220# Bill Russell matchup, right up till the tipoff against a world-record-equalling high jumper or the first series of fast breaks against someone who could run the half mile in well under two minutes…

Over the course of a season, the other teams might figure out how to play them. There are many ways to try to force the pace of the game down, limit the number of possessions, turn it into a game of starts and stops, make a few flashy plays matter. That’s how the Bad Boy Pistons eventually managed to stop the Celtics and Lakers. But until then…

[markdash]

@littlespeedysuperbike

A match between the '60s Celtics and a modern team wouldn’t be close.

The Celtics would run them out of the arena! That the ‘05-07 Suns didn’t win a title obscures how difficult it was for NBA teams to match up with a team whose offensive pace was a few percent faster than theirs; the Celtics ran 120-130 possessions per game compared to an 80-90 possession game now. One versus one, one play at a time, a modern swingman would be able to get ahead in his matchup with John Havlicek - for about a quarter until they realized they had just sprinted the first six miles of a marathon. Most 7’+/250#+ centers would look forward to the 6’10/220# Bill Russell matchup, right up till the tipoff against a world-record-equalling high jumper or the first series of fast breaks against someone who could run the half mile in well under two minutes…

Over the course of a season, the other teams might figure out how to play them. There are many ways to try to force the pace of the game down, limit the number of possessions, turn it into a game of starts and stops, make a few flashy plays matter. That’s how the Bad Boy Pistons eventually managed to stop the Celtics and Lakers. But until then…

Just ask Paul Westhead how well this idea works in the NBA.

[antonio107]

@Chessic_Sense

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.

This is what I thought, as well. Of course, you’re only counting humans, lol.

Certainly someone like Alekhine could be argued as one of the greats as far back as the 30s, but if we consider the past 150 years to be the “modern era” of a really old game like chess, I wonder how a Kasparov or Karpov would fare against, say, Andre Philidor.

[Barkis_is_Willin]

@Jimmy_Chitwood

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 3 point shooting stat is interesting, but who is doing something in slam dunk contests today that Dr. J or Dominique Wilkins couldn’t do 30 years ago? I actually think the dunk contests of the 80s were much more exciting than watching Blake Griffin jump over the hood of a car.