Wednesday, August 06, 2003
Records
My wife is a swim coach, so every once in a while there will be a swimming magazine in the house. I was browsing one when I came across the following passage:
"In that [2002] race, Kitajima shattered the oldest record in men's swimming, winning the 200 meter breaststroke in 2:09.97. That bettered the mark (2:10.16) set by American Mike Barrowman in 1992 at the Barcelona Games."
Leaving aside 0.19 seconds as a shattering (the best time has since declined by 0.45 seconds in the year since), the oldest time record in men's swimming was only ten years old? Granted that Barry seems to be breaking a record everytime we look up, but from a baseball perspective a ten-year-old record is brand new. Of course, in competition against a clock you get a good view of improvement in training and technique over time. In competition between hitters and pitchers, you simply see how The Powers That Be have decided to balance offense and defense to properly market to the fans.
How we can draw curves through data points showing the improvement in track and swimming times over the years. An Olympic men's time from 100 years ago gets beaten routinely in girl's high school swim meets. But in baseball the greats of yesteryear are assumed to be on par with the athletes of today. Some will claim that improvement is large when the sport is in flux, but when the game has reached full development the improvement hits a plateau. And some will claim that baseball has been in full development since the end of the Deadball Era.
On the other hand, integration, the Latin and Asian influxes, the slider, night baseball, westward expansion, the closer, drive-through knee surgery and a host of other changes would argue against that. The game that Barry plays is not the same as the game that the Babe played.
posted by David 8:39 AM
