Today's athletes are better in general than their predecessors, and that goes for all sports. Training methods are better, diets etc. This is proven by the fact that in sports in which its the athlete against a clock, like running a mile for example, or against some other measure like a high jump or pole vault, world records keep falling.

Babe Ruth and his contemporaries played in an era in which runs were cheap, just as they are in today's game. Thats why many of baseballs all time offensive records were set in the late 20's and 30's. If you have a baseball encyclopedia and looked up 1930 or 1931, you'd see that the leagues batted around .300 (as a whole!) and the league E.R.A. was probably well over 5.00.

If you check out 1968, tho, the year that Bob Gibson posted a 1.12 E.R.A. with about 10 shutouts, you'd see that there were maybe 30-40 starting pitchers with E.R.A.'s under 3.00, that hitters averaged about .230, and Carl Yazstremski won the A.L. batting championship hitting .301. In that era, runs were very scarce.

My point is that while there never be another Babe Ruth, had the Barry Bonds of 2000-2002 been playing then, his stats would have dwarfed the Babe's numbers, just like if Pedro Martinez or Randy Johnson had pitched in 1968 they probably would have been Gibson's equal or better.

Yes..First there was Elgin Baylor, then Dr.J, then MJ, but done the line somewhere there will be a player who will prove to be better than even Jordan.

I'm just sorry it wasn't Keith Van Horn (actually he was going to be the next Larry Bird)(just some humor from a die hard Nets fan)