If you ignore steroids, and emphasize the quality of the competition and the vastly increased stress of modern baseball caused by all those extra travel miles and jet lag, Bonds beats Williams by almost any reasonable standard. For the bulk of Williams' career he had virtually no real long term competition for batting honors other than Dimaggio and Mantle, and in his entire career, Feller and Ford were the only A-level HoF pitchers he faced who were in their primes at the same time he was. Obviously the relative sizes of the talent pools had mostly to do with that.

But if you don't ignore steroids, then it's a whole other ball game, because then you have to figure out just how to measure the steroid effect. Which is impossible. And then there's the matter of the missing wartime years.

The bottom line here is that it's a totally subjective call to decide between these two. He who defines the terms dictates the answer.

the vastly increased stress of modern baseball caused by all those extra travel miles and jet lag

Hm. This is the first time I've read that travel was easier on players in the 30s/40s/50s than it is today.

Hm. This is the first time I've read that travel was easier on players in the 30s/40s/50s than it is today.

Are you kidding? The only real disadvantage back then was that it took longer to get there from station to station. (I say that because the station was usually much closer to the hotel and the ballpark than the airport and the motel is today.) But for the most part (other than wartime) teams always travelled first class with all the amenities.

When Williams played, his longest trip was from Boston to St. Louis through 1953, or to Kansas City from 1955 to 1960. Even that's deceptive, because the Red Sox usually wouldn't begin a western swing in Missouri. More likely they'd be going there from Chicago, Detroit or Cleveland.

Of course they always allowed far more travel days than they do now. They played far fewer night games, which made it much easier to adjust eating schedules, etc. Overnight travel had sleeping accommodations. If you read the memoirs of players and writers who played in the later era of train travel, it's almost always recalled with a great sense of camaraderie and nostalgia. You sure as hell don't read any tributes to jet travel nowadays. It's mostly described as a nightmare, what with the 3 a.m. flights after a hurried meal after an extra inning night game, and coast to coast trips involving an instant three hour body clock adjustment. These are young guys, but that sort of stuff can wear almost anybody down.

Of course they always allowed far more travel days than they do now.

And they spent most of that time travelling. It's not like ballplayers fly coach - I have a hard time believing that five hours on a plane is harder to deal with than 15-16 hours on a train. And in the modern era with the unbalanced schedule, there really aren't that many coast-to-coast trips.

And modern ballplayers play far, far fewer doubleheaders. Players hate doubleheaders, Ernie Banks notwithstanding.

And in the modern era with the unbalanced schedule, there really aren't that many coast-to-coast trips.

Wouldn't it depend on the team? The White Sox/Cubs schedule these days probably beats anybody's from the 1950s. But I'm sure the Mariners' travel schedule, with as many trips to the Eastern/Central Time Zones as they must make while still taking fairly long flights within their own time zone, would rival anything from the past on the inconvenient scale..

I recently took overnight train from Moscow to St Pete and back and Moscow to Ulyanovsk and back. It sucked big time. Beds are not built to anybody over 5'8". Doing it to for six months has to take a toll on a ballplayer.

Anderson is going to compare Roger Clemens to Warren Spahn in his next article.

But I'm sure the Mariners' travel schedule, with as many trips to the Eastern/Central Time Zones as they must make while still taking fairly long flights within their own time zone, would rival anything from the past on the inconvenient scale..

What's the West Coast's record in East Coast games? I know that in the NFL this year, the 9ers beat the Bills. That's the WC's closest victory to the Atlantic.

What's the West Coast's record in East Coast games?

Somebody did this study, I can't remember where I read it ... maybe I heard it on NPR? Anyway, West Coast teams suck hard on the first day or two after traveling back East.

Of course they always allowed far more travel days than they do now.

I'm sure travelling by bus and train was a pain in the A, but I don't think it makes any difference in a discussion of "how great were they". The pitchers Teddy Ballgame faced had spend just as much time travelling.

For the bulk of Williams' career he had virtually no real long term competition for batting honors other than Dimaggio and Mantle, and in his entire career, Feller and Ford were the only A-level HoF pitchers he faced who were in their primes at the same time he was. Obviously the relative sizes of the talent pools had mostly to do with that.

And while the AL was technically integrated from 1947 onward, in practice it really wasn't in Williams' time, especially regarding pitchers. In his entire career, Williams had no more than a handful of at-bats against pitchers of color.

The pitchers Teddy Ballgame faced had spend just as much time travelling.

And so did the other hitters with their collective 708 OPS.

Somewhere there's a research scientist doing some serious leg presses right now.

and the players of williams era didn't have access to the medical facilities, nutritionists, gyms, etc, etc. that modern players do. Swings and roun-a-bouts.

In his entire career, Williams had no more than a handful of at-bats against pitchers of color.

If we limit the conversation to starting pitchers (not that we should, but I'm just sayin'), I suspect the same is true of Bonds.

You also need to account for the high probability that Ted Williams could have been an amphetamine user during those years after the wars. During WW II, the armed forces gave their men amphetamine to use, and these men brought back that knowledge (and habit) with them when they returned to civilian life. That would have given him the ability to continue hitting late in the season when most old bodies were starting to deteriorate.

He was also a Marine, so that gave him an advantage relative to other ballplayers in the physical training and techniques he learned. Not that this is illegal or anything, just that he did have that advantage over most ballplayers of that era who probably didn't know much about physical fitness whereas today, anybody and everybody could have their own personal fitness trainer helping them and dieticians feeding them correctly.

You also need to account for the high probability that Ted Williams could have been an amphetamine user during those years after the wars. During WW II, the armed forces gave their men amphetamine to use, and these men brought back that knowledge (and habit) with them when they returned to civilian life. That would have given him the ability to continue hitting late in the season when most old bodies were starting to deteriorate.

He was also a Marine, so that gave him an advantage relative to other ballplayers in the physical training and techniques he learned. Not that this is illegal or anything, just that he did have that advantage over most ballplayers of that era who probably didn't know much about physical fitness whereas today, anybody and everybody could have their own personal fitness trainer helping them and dieticians feeding them correctly.

Neither really accounts for Ted's first four seasons, including age 22 and 23 seasons that were two of his best.

What's the West Coast's record in East Coast games?

Somebody did this study, I can't remember where I read it ... maybe I heard it on NPR? Anyway, West Coast teams suck hard on the first day or two after traveling back East.

This has long been the case not only for baseball, but for the NBA, and in the NBA it seems to go equally well (or badly) for East Coast teams going to the Pacific.

And without getting into the drug question (either steroids or amphetamines), it stands to reason that back in the day, well-conditioned players who were fanatical about practice as Williams was would stand out against their peers far more than they do in our age of near-universal conditioning.

And of course Steve only reinforces my point about the nature of the AL in Ted's latter days. It lagged way behind the National League in coming up with players who could have given Williams serious year-to-year competition for all those batting titles. He would obviously have stood out in the NL, too, but competing against Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Minnie Minoso, Al Kaline, Jackie Jensen and Larry Doby isn't quite the same thing as competing with Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Johnny Mize, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Richie Ashburn, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Ted Kluszewski, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner and Roberto Clemente.

I know I must have left out a key name or two, but the bulk of star talent in the last ten years of Williams' career was as lopsided as it's ever been in history, which didn't exactly hurt his quest for all those awards and black ink.

f we limit the conversation to starting pitchers (not that we should, but I'm just sayin'), I suspect the same is true of Bonds.

Bonds Vs:

Dwight Gooden - 75 PAs
Chan Ho Park - 64
Hideo Nomo - 59
Ramon Martinez - 58
Jose Rijo - 49
Pedro Martinez - 43
Jose DeLeon - 40
Odalis Perez - 40
Miguel Batista - 37
Armando Reynoso - 36

and so on...

No comparison

Indeed. My bad. I was thinking of "African-American" starting pitchers. As someone who reads lots of baseball but hardly ever watches it (true even back when I had TV), with the exception of Pedro (& by extension his brother) I couldn't have told you whether any of the Latino pitchers you list are too dark-skinned to have pitched in the AL during Williams' era or not.

Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Johnny Mize, Willie Mays, Stan Musial, Richie Ashburn, Ernie Banks, Frank Robinson, Ted Kluszewski, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, Ralph Kiner and Roberto Clemente.

nitpick: Clemente's first decent season as a hitter was 1960 -- he never really overlapped with Williams. And what in the world is Richie Ashburn doing in that list? :-)

As to "pitchers of color", there have never been a great number of African-American pitchers in baseball. I don't carry snapshots in my head, but the only star black pitcher in the 50s NL I can think of is Newcombe. It really wasn't until the 60s that you saw star pitchers of color -- Jenkins, Gibson, Marichal, to an extent Al Downing. But for whatever reason (racism being on obvious possibility), African-Americans in particular have never been well-represented among pitchers.

The impact of integration is obvious on the hitting side. From 1949-1959, African-American players won 9 MVPs in NL. African-Americans won 5 more in the 60s with 2 others going to Latin American players. (I'm assuming Dick Groat was white.)

In the AL, Elston Howard was the first black MVP in 1963, then later Robinson and Versalles as the only Latin American.

The CYA didn't start until 1956 and was a single award through 1966, but Newcombe was the only black pitcher to win one (he also won MVP that year). Right after the move to 2 awards, Gibson (twice), Jenkins and Blue won CYAs. But you didn't get another African-American CYA until Gooden in 1985 and there hasn't been a single one since. Am I forgetting someone or is Dave Stewart the best African-American starting pitcher of the last 20 years or so?

Of course there were a fair number of Latin American CYA winners over that period, at least some of whom are of African descent (as are we all! :-).

I'm not trying to make silly distinctions as to who counts as "black", I'm just trying to point out that integration, and specifically the integration of African-Americans, into baseball did not have a substantial impact on the level of pitching talent. People often like to point out that Ruth only faced white pitchers. Well, at no point in baseball history did hitters face a substantial number of African-American pitchers. They have, obviously, in recent decades faced a lot of Latin American and an increasing number of Asian pitchers.

But look at the Bonds list posted above. For African-American pitchers, he's got 75 PA against Gooden and, near as I can tell, his second-most PA against an African-American pitcher is Chuck McElroy at 35. Over his entire career, I'm not sure he's had even 200 PA against African-American pitchers. Again, obviously, a lot more PA against Latin and Asian pitchers than Ruth or Williams -- though I'm far from convinced that it's a substantial enough percentage of his PA to make any real difference. And of course the expansion in baseball's talent pool is offset, at least in part, by the expansion in the number of teams.

But where integration would have made a difference for Ruth and Williams isn't so much in the quality of the pitchers they would have faced but in the quality of the hitters they would have been compared to.

Indeed. My bad. I was thinking of "African-American" starting pitchers. As someone who reads lots of baseball but hardly ever watches it (true even back when I had TV), with the exception of Pedro (& by extension his brother) I couldn't have told you whether any of the Latino pitchers you list are too dark-skinned to have pitched in the AL during Williams' era or not.

Not a one of them could have pitched in the Majors before 1947, and very few American League teams would likely have signed them for quite some time after that. After Satchel Paige, who didn't last more than a few part time years, the next reasonably successful black AL pitcher was Earl Wilson, who didn't come along until after Williams retired. Whereas the NL had Joe Black (1952 TSN ROY), Don Newcombe, Brooks Lawrence and Sam Jones, and at the end of Williams's career, Gibson and Marichal.

Williams wins if you include number of enemy planes shot down over replacement.

nitpick: Clemente's first decent season as a hitter was 1960 -- he never really overlapped with Williams. And what in the world is Richie Ashburn doing in that list? :-)

Yeah, I can see the :-), but Ashburn did win two batting titles, and not cheesy ones, either. He beat the runnerup Mays by 19 points in 1955 and hit .350 to win again in 1958.

Though by that standard, I should have included Harvey Kuenn in my AL grouping, since he was also a very good banjo hitter.

Williams wins if you include number of enemy planes shot down over replacement.

Actually, Williams never shot down any enemy planes. He spent WW2 stateside as an instructor, flying SNJ trainers. He was assigned to a fighter unit flying F4U Corsairs in 1945 and shipped out to the Pacific, but only got as far as Hawaii before the war ended, and didn't see combat.

He certainly did see combat with VMF-311 flying Grumman F9F Panthers during the Korean war, but these were on ground attack missions, not fighter-to-fighter combat. Not that those missions were easier, at all, because ground fire could shoot you down just as easily as an enemy fighter, as Williams indeed learned.

Ted Williams's F9F after a crash landing

But his opportunities to shoot down enemy aircraft were somewhere between slim and non-existant.

There was only one major-league player who actually became a fighter ace by shooting down five or more enemy aircaft, and that was Jake Jones, Williams's teammate on the 1947 Red Sox.

I'm not trying to make silly distinctions as to who counts as "black",

Silly as these distinctions are, they're exactly what The Lords of Baseball made in deciding who could and couldn't play "organized" baseball. And whether one was African-American or African-Latin-American or African-Caribbean made no difference whatsoever; if your skin was any darker than swarthy, you couldn't play. And while there have never been many African-American pitchers in MLB, there has been a very significant and growing proportion of African-Latin-American pitchers, meaningfully increasing the talent pool.

Am I forgetting someone or is Dave Stewart the best African-American starting pitcher of the last 20 years or so?

C.C. Sabathia is African-American, isn't he?

there has been a very significant and growing proportion of African-Latin-American pitchers, meaningfully increasing the talent pool.

I'm not sure you can say "there has been" unless you're just talking the last 20 years -- which you might be since we're talking Bonds. Still, in Bonds' case, based on the posted list, I'm still not sure we're talking about more than 10% of his PAs against "pitchers of color." That would be evidence of tougher competition than Williams faced but not hugely so. Nevertheless, the "tougher competition" argument regarding differences among Ruth, Williams, Bonds (or between Williams and his 50s NL counterparts) that are due to the color barrier has very little to do with the quality of the pitching they faced and much more about the quality of the batters to whom they're compared.

(There's all sorts of stuff about better conditioning, better nutrition, etc. which would argue today's athletes are better in an absolute sense but who cares -- there's little point in (and really no way of) making any cross-era comparisons in an absolute sense).

Assessments of the size of the talent pool are actually quite difficult in my opinion. Obviously baseball is drawing from many, many more countries in the last 20-30 years and there's been substantial population growth in the US. But counteracting that are expansion and the much greater competition from other sports for athletic talent in the US.

And the "integration phenomenon" in baseball may not have that much to do with expansion in the size of the talent pool. Why are there still so few African-American pitchers but a reasonable number of African-Latin-American pitchers? Why is such a huge percentage of MLB players drawn from the tiny population of the Dominican Republic -- a population of about 10 million, less than half the size of the NY metro area? This is a long, long way from a sheer numbers phenomenon.

#9's greatest under the radar is the Triple Crown at Minneapolis--a so. cal teen alone in Minnesota--
Lefty O'Doul is underrated as his mentor in the box
the PCL ethos,too

WD in #20 articulates what few have and what few can and frames the question smartly in the context of baseball gravity

it's apples and oranges
or apples and the mega pumpkin they grew out at Half Moon Bay
(somebody will provide bleak evidence that the pumpkin is organic)

Actually, Williams never shot down any enemy planes

Spoilsport. Now the only lasting image I have of Williams is of his head spinning in one of the cryogenic storage facilities...