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When comparing players from different eras, it's pretty much accepted as Gospel that today's athlete is superior to those who played at the turn of the century.
Certainly, this theory bears out when you look at sports like track, where modern runners leave the sprinters of yore in the proverbial dust. The stopwatch doesn't lie -- guys like Jesse Owens and Jim Thorpe wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics with the times they posted in their heydays.
But it occurs to me that the same thing cannot be said about fastball pitchers. If the stopwatch doesn't lie, neither, then, does the radar gun.
On August 20, 1974, the Guinness Book of World Records clocked Nolan Ryan's fastball at 100.9 miles per hour during a game against the Chicago White Sox.
A generation later, Mark Wohlers hit 103 mph in a 1995 spring training game, while an Armando Benitez fastball clocked in at 102 mph during a 2002 game at Shea Stadium, according to baseballalmanac.com. Bobby Jenks, Randy Johnson and Rob Nen also threw 102-mph fastballs in recent years.
These fastballs are only slightly swifter than Ryan's heater thrown more than 30 years ago --and it's likely Ryan reached 102 or 103 mph in games where a radar gun was not being used.
The gap in years between Ryan's 1974 radar gun reading and the velocities posted by modern speedball merchants is telling.
Modern nutrition, training techniques and a host of other variables have taken place over the last 30 years, leading to faster runners. And yet, those same advances in training and nutrition do not seem to have translated to fastballs.
You could make the argument that training habits in Ryan's day were closer to those employed during Walter Johnson's era than they are to modern methods. In the 1970s, for instance, weight training was still eschewed by most of the baseball establishment. Many of the techniques used during the '70s weren't too different from those used in the deadball era.
And yet, despite the huge advances in training technology we've seen in the last 30 years, there has not been an appreciable jump in the fastest pitchers' speed.
Is it flawed logic, then, to assume that there probably wasn't a huge difference between the speed of pitchers in the 1970s versus the speeds posted by Johnson, Grove, Feller, etc.?
When comparing Ryan to modern pitchers, I'm sure there are some variables to consider, such as the difference in speed gun technology that has taken place since the 1970s. But, even accounting for these differentials, the fastball Nolan Ryan threw on August 20, 1974 is right up there with the best fastballs baseball has to offer more than 30 years later.
So, I think it's a mistake to automatically assume that Walter Johnson wasn't a patch on today's speed kings, just because he played a few generations ago. Advances in training techniques do not seem to have affected the high hard one.
Certainly, this theory bears out when you look at sports like track, where modern runners leave the sprinters of yore in the proverbial dust. The stopwatch doesn't lie -- guys like Jesse Owens and Jim Thorpe wouldn't even qualify for the modern Olympics with the times they posted in their heydays.
But it occurs to me that the same thing cannot be said about fastball pitchers. If the stopwatch doesn't lie, neither, then, does the radar gun.
On August 20, 1974, the Guinness Book of World Records clocked Nolan Ryan's fastball at 100.9 miles per hour during a game against the Chicago White Sox.
A generation later, Mark Wohlers hit 103 mph in a 1995 spring training game, while an Armando Benitez fastball clocked in at 102 mph during a 2002 game at Shea Stadium, according to baseballalmanac.com. Bobby Jenks, Randy Johnson and Rob Nen also threw 102-mph fastballs in recent years.
These fastballs are only slightly swifter than Ryan's heater thrown more than 30 years ago --and it's likely Ryan reached 102 or 103 mph in games where a radar gun was not being used.
The gap in years between Ryan's 1974 radar gun reading and the velocities posted by modern speedball merchants is telling.
Modern nutrition, training techniques and a host of other variables have taken place over the last 30 years, leading to faster runners. And yet, those same advances in training and nutrition do not seem to have translated to fastballs.
You could make the argument that training habits in Ryan's day were closer to those employed during Walter Johnson's era than they are to modern methods. In the 1970s, for instance, weight training was still eschewed by most of the baseball establishment. Many of the techniques used during the '70s weren't too different from those used in the deadball era.
And yet, despite the huge advances in training technology we've seen in the last 30 years, there has not been an appreciable jump in the fastest pitchers' speed.
Is it flawed logic, then, to assume that there probably wasn't a huge difference between the speed of pitchers in the 1970s versus the speeds posted by Johnson, Grove, Feller, etc.?
When comparing Ryan to modern pitchers, I'm sure there are some variables to consider, such as the difference in speed gun technology that has taken place since the 1970s. But, even accounting for these differentials, the fastball Nolan Ryan threw on August 20, 1974 is right up there with the best fastballs baseball has to offer more than 30 years later.
So, I think it's a mistake to automatically assume that Walter Johnson wasn't a patch on today's speed kings, just because he played a few generations ago. Advances in training techniques do not seem to have affected the high hard one.
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