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From: rossiter@cornell.UUCP (David G. Rossiter)
Newsgroups: net.sport.baseball
Subject: Cobb's records
Message-ID: <2046@cornell.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 28-May-85 13:01:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: cornell.2046
Posted: Tue May 28 13:01:48 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 30-May-85 03:59:20 EDT
Reply-To: rossiter@cornell.UUCP (David G. Rossiter)
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept.
Lines: 23

I can't think of a polite way to phrase this, so here goes...

Cobb's records are worthless.  He never had to face the Bob Gibsons,
J.R. Richards, Dwight Goodens, Dennis Boyds etc. etc. of his day.

Walter Johnson's records are worthless.  He never had to pitch to
Mays, Aaron, Clemente, Campanella...

The game is fundamentally different now that the best available players
are on the field, whether they are of English or African ancestry, or
whether they were born in the US, Venezuela, or Japan.

Baseball history has its prehistory with Jackie Robinson.  As late as
1957 (I was looking over my baseball card collection the other night...)
about half the teams had NO Afro-americans.  This included well-known
racist teams like St. Louis Cardinals and Washington Senators.  So the
real modern era begins about 1964, with the passage of the Civil Rights
Act and the acceptance of the marginal Afro-american ballplayer (not just
the Frank Robinsons and Henry Aarons).

David Rossiter / CS Dep't / Cornell University / Ithaca / NY / 14850 / USA
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rossiter@Cornell.ARPA (ARPAnet) ; rossiter@CRNLCS (BITNET)