Is It Really Fair to Measure Great Players From Different Time Periods?

     I had the thought while I was watching Shohei do Shohei things last night, demolishing home runs, while remembering that he is one of the best pitchers in MLB as well. Obviously I began thinking about Babe Ruth who was really the first baseball unicorn, a good pitcher who could also hit absolute bombs. That got me thinking.. Is it really fair to compare Babe Ruth to Shohei Ohtani? They play in completely different eras. Ruth probably would've passed out seeing how much money Ohtani is going to be making over the course of his contract. Why do we try and say 'the greatest of all time' when the sports we know and love are changing each generation? 

    Michael Jordan is widely considered the greatest basketball player of all time, not LeBron James. LeBron leads Michael Jordan in nearly every stat in basketball except 2--steals and championship wins. The stat that most Jordan fans like to throw around is that Michael went 6-0 in the finals with 2 three-peat victories. That's an incredible stat, no doubt about it and probably won't ever be surpassed. But if the standard of greatness is winning, why isn't Bill Russell considered the greatest? He won 11 championships for the Boston Celtics and was the centerpiece in all those victories. The argument would probably be that Bill Russell wasn't playing against the same competition as Jordan where basketball became even more difficult than it ever had been up until that point. 

    I would argue the same goes for the comparison of MJ and LeBron. Now, I fully recognize that the defense that MJ faced pales in comparison to what LeBron has faced and currently faced. Lets be honest, the defensive play in the NBA is a joke now. With that in mind though, offensively the NBA has never been better. Some of the best defensive players in the NBA still can't do much to stop the players on offense because they are so so good. 

    The NBA changes with each generation and yet we will still compare LeBron and MJ until the end of time. The same will probably go with NFL quarterbacks like Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, and Patrick Mahomes. The comparisons will never stop, and I think that part of the reason why is just because we like to talk about sports in this country and some of the older generation will forever and always think that their generation of athletes are better than the current generation. Once we in the younger generation get older, we will probably make the exact same arguments when the next generation of athletes come around. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that objectively, arguing about atheletes from different generations is completely stupid and we just argue players in each generation. That being said, let's never stop talking about it. LeBron will forever be my GOAT, even if I find him annoying as hell these days, and I won't ever stop debating people about it. Long live sports arguments, cheers friends.