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The Truth

Posted By Brian B.

You pick a few anecdotal crowd totals and believe they prove your point about the whole baseball world sucking now compared to when you were a kid. The overall attendance figures are better now than in any other era of baseball and for every bad crowd you mention there are good ones to report: last place SD - 24,229, the disappointing Diamondbacks against the lowly Pirates - 31,578 ... I could go on but the point is attendance has never been better than this era, to try and moan about the numbers is silly.
For every

"Mets has 3 or 4 number 1 starters by todays standards back in 69 and the early 70's. O's had 4 20 game winners on their staff in one year"

For every good group of pitchers then I could easily list a bad group then or a good group now, a useless exercise and useless argument.

"Feller still holds the record for fastest pitched ball in a game. 104 mph I believe"

Measured how? This old canard lives on in the everything-used-to-be-better crowd but they actually couldn;t actually measure a thrown pitch then like they can now. In every measurable athletic endeavor -- throwing ajavelin,running,swimming,whatever -- athletes today are miles better than they used to be, but in things that are not measurable you expect me to believe that the peak of human performance was 1940 ? People ran 10 seconds for 100 yards, now they're under 9; men won Olympic gold medals in swimming with times that high school girls beat now; In 1940 the world javelin record was 78 meters, now it's 98 meters, but you actually believe that although people can throw an object 25% further they can't throw it faster, that this particular, unmeasurable thing stopped evolving with Bob Feller 60 years ago ? The very definition of closed minded.

"Give Mantle or Mays those special
pills and shots Sosa and Bonds takes and I love to see what they would have done"

Do you have any proof ? If not, then try to deal with the facts: Mantle never lifted a weight in his life (a fact he was quite proud of) and improve himself as he matured by drinking like a fish. Mays never lifted weights and didn't work out year round. Bonds and Sosa lift weights, don't eat anything that's not good for them and work out like madmen.

No wonder you didn't put your name to the tripe you spouted, it's the same crap that people have been saying for years. Old-timers gave ted Williams heat when he was young, stating that he would've sucked against real good pitchers like Mathewson and the big train. It's a laughable human frailty, but I have no interst in hearing it. The facts don't support anything you've said, so try and deal with it, life moves on. Things just keep getting better and better. Enjoy the game today, it's never been better.