How come baseball players back in the day couldn't catch, throw or field well?

Question

When they show all the various games played like in the 1940s and earlier, why did the fielders suck so much at fielding? They never made diving catches, long running catches, climbed the walls robbing home runs, making quick hard double plays, throwing out runners at the plate from the outfield and all the other impressive highlight reels seen everyday today. You would see them frequently dropping the balls and kicking them and could barely get the ball back into the infield fast enough. Runners could easily steal bases. Pitchers never picked off runners. There was no gold glove or defensive player of the year award. No one back then really cares about a players fielding and it was all about the batting stats. The best catch they could find was that overrated catch by Willie Mays which didnt even look that impressive at all. But yet there were players hitting 500 and 600 foot home runs. Why did the players back then (1800s to 1940s and 50s) stink so much at fielding?

Answer 1

Players back then may not have been as good in the field as they are today, and that has to do with a number of things: the quality of equipment (balls, gloves, cleats, even uniforms), the quality of the playing field (none of them were groomed like they are today), and the athleticism of the players. No one would argue that today's players are better conditioned than the players of that era, whose off-season didn't consists of meeting with personal trainers and nutritionists three times a week.



You're missing one key thing, though. The first World Series was televised in 1947, and even then only a few hundred thousand homes had television sets. All of the footage you see prior to World War II is almost exclusively from newsreels, and while people in Detroit or Cleveland might have been excited in 1928 about a game between the Indians and Tigers, neither team was successful and there would have been little reason to capture any footage of them, let alone save it for prosperity. So what you have is not so much a lack of historical footage of great plays, but a lack of historical footage in general. Nowadays a game against two bottom feeders still has a decent chance of being televised nationwide, and even if it doesn't, a single play can land it on any one of a thousand sports recap shows the next day.



The fact that there was no Gold Glove back then is immaterial. There wasn't a Cy Young Award either, yet no one claims that pitching was terrible back then. People cared about defense quite a bit back in those days - there's a reason Rabbit Maranville was elected to the Hall Of Fame despite putting up a batting line of .258/.318/.340, and the double play combination of Joe Tinker, Johnny Evers, and Frank Chance was so well-respected that the phrase "Tinker to Evers to Chance" entered the lexicon of the general public and the trio had a poem written about them. All three of them are in the Hall of Fame, and it's certainly not because of their offense.



Think about how good Ozzie Smith was in the field. Now imagine that the only footage of Ozzie Smith available was from his World Series apperances. Now imagine that the footage was black-and-white and grainy. Seventy-five years from now, would anyone remember how great Ozzie Smith was? No, we'd be talking about how great today's players are and how Ozzie Smith must have been done something right because he's in the Hall Of Fame, but wondering how it was possible since Ozzie couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat.

Answer 2

First off the conditioning of many of those players wasn’t like it is today, most of had jobs, usually labor jobs that they did in the ‘offseason’. Unlike today were the player can rest and do their own conditioning in the offseason most of the early players (really up till the 1960s) worked the rest of the year because they were paid so little.



Secondly, look at the equipment they used, you are not making half the catches today if they still used the older gloves. A lot of those, diving or home run stealing catches are made in the webbing of the glove, that many old timers didn’t have.



Thirdly, was body type, most of the older players were shorter, heavier player. Runner, diving, and climbing the wall weren’t in their make up. Its just the way the game has evolved. Same way that most modern 2000 era players can’t bunt, hit & run, or simply hit the ball to the right side to advance a runner, like they could in the 1980s and early 1990s.



Your statement: “No one back then really cares about a players fielding and it was all about the batting stats”, isn’t that different than today. There are a lot of good defensive players, but if they don’t ‘put up the numbers’ offensively then at best they become late game defensive subs. Historically Baseball fans have followed offensive stats, and that is were most of the money to players is going for. You talked about impressive highlights, but back in the ‘20s and ’30 the fans may not have found them to be impressive, that subject to opinion of the time. On the modern game highlights how many times do they show a batter who hits the ball to the right side to advance a runner from second to third, so a sac fly can get the run… not very often. So player don’t work on that skill, instead they work on trying to hit home runs every at bat to get on a highlight reel, even though they now strike out more than the old timers did.

Answer 3

Well I think you need to see some more games. They could. But then again if you don't think that Mays catch was awesome then maybe watching more wouldn't help you. To your point though fielding has progressed a lot because the gloves are infinitely better now than they were back then and players are faster.

Answer 4

Cuz you Europeans are some loopy bastards. or Indians or everywhere different than united statesa. i assume. in assessment perhaps that's trouble-free, although i'm unsure it is to assert it does not harm. A baseball continues to be extraordinarily problematical. in the past whilst baseball gamers did no longer use gloves yet broken bones stored human beings out for long sessions of time and price their group. as nicely that, gloves enable for a much broader basket wherein to capture the ball.

Answer 5

They focused on the offensive game like gapping the ball & stealing bass, small ball, defense was not a highlight reel like today because no tv

Answer 6

There was no ESPN back in the day, so I think your viewed sample size of bygone eras is a bit skewed.

Answer 7

The baseball was a lump of crap, their gloves were chunks of leather, and their footwear was pretty much normal shoes.

Answer 8

Are you kidding me willie mays overrated catch? wow you must be blind cuz that was one hell of a catch