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Kirby Puckett was about that size.

It isn't impossible, there was a Probowl NT that played in the NFL in the late 80s/early 90s named Jerry Ball that was around 5-9, so there are odd exceptions to the typical body size.

The athletes in all sports are better now because it is a full time job, but there were probably percentage wise more quality athletes playing baseball 40 years ago and back because 'it' was the game.

How many great athletes that play football or basketball would have made the pros if they played baseball?

I think compared to other sports, baseball's particular set of highly developed skills works against having raw athletic talent. Someone who had a great curveball in the 30s would have a great curveball today and probably it would be just as effective. Someone that was a good quarterback in the 30s might find running the Colts offense like Peyton Manning a challenge, as the sport is so much different now than it was then.

We're talking about DiMaggio right?

i don't really get what you're saying about bonds. for one thing, you'd have the radio, poss. television. you'd also have the same scathing articles you do now - the press would've hated bonds in the 50s, too (ted williams). even breaking HR records didn't give you a free pass, look at maris - bonds might've been just as villified, his attitude toward the press replacing maris's "nothing-man" persona/fluke season as the primary reason. (this is ignoring the race factor, which likely would've been horrific.)

[irrelevant unnecessary sidenote but i just gotta say it anyway: had bonds been born in 1930 he certainly wouldn't have broken any HR records]

however, i'm not sure how much i agree w/ you: why wouldn't the "no surprise there" reaction you get when you see his HR highlight on sportscenter every night not be present if sportscenter at night was replaced with a newspaper in the morning? i suppose the highly descriptive quality old game reports must've had might have contributed to mythologization depending on the reporter's embellishements, but generally you're going to know your guy's results just the same as you do now, lack of visuals the obv difference. maybe it depends on the kind of person you are, but i feel like being able to actually see these things happening is just as likely to enhance a "mythology" as not, possibly because of how the mind works, with the most spectacular events the most likely to leave lasting imprints (especially when out of context a la highlight reels? unlikely, but it filters out the stink). for some reason i'm having trouble putting myself in that environment but those are my thoughts at the moment.

btw, a couple thoughts regarding "the visual element" of the 50s: it's said willie mays's catch is only famous because it was on television - that was 1954? so there's an argument for both of us there: it's mythicization via visuals but from a time when such visuals by themselves were really something special and far from "omnipresent"- would that same catch have lasted more than a week in the public memory if it happened this october? about sports highlights, maybe there was a TWIB style show on one of the networks, maybe mlb used movie theater newsreels as advertisement (i don't know how the newsreel system worked (were they like ads?) but this seems likely)?

Good point on the Catch. Apparently (visual) media had a different role back then. I originally had in mind something more akin to the Called Shot, and exactly how mythical it is because it's historicity has been notoriously difficult to verify into a single sanctioned narrative.

1950s
Total Attendance: 165M

Highest
Season: Milwaukee Braves 1957 2,215,404
Decade: New York Yankees 16,133,658

Lowest
Season: StL Browns 1950 247,131
Decade: Washington Senators 5,598,081

1990s
Total Attendance: 601M

Highest
Season: Colorado Rockies 1993 4,483,350
Decade: Baltimore Orioles 32,192,618

Lowest
Season: Montreal Expos 1999 773,277
Decade: Montreal Expos 13,008,431

anyone got any explanations?

I was just googling for info on disposable income and ran into this article, which has more information about baseball's economics then I ever wanted to know.

Perhaps the trend of relegating day games to weekends to maximize workers' attendance?

here's an example of how much recent attendance is tromping the 50s: in 1956 the milwaukee braves finished one game out of the penant race with a 92-62 record, and their attendace was just over 2 million. in 2002 the brewers finished 41 games out of the division with a record of 56-106, and had a total attendance of just under 2 million. (those two years were pulled out of a hat and i should note that in 2002 miller park still had a new car smell, and attendance dropped to 1.7M the next year. still impressive.)

haven't day games been played on weekends for some time now? i can't imagine it was ever otherwise, and night games have been common since the '50s at least.

You've got four extra home games per team x 20k per game = 80k more attendance per season x 30 teams x 10 years = 24mln more attendance = 354mln, so that's, uh, 1.7x the attendance?

Do those attendance numbers include playoff games? Those are a sellout in most markets, and you've got two or three times as many.

More new stadiums, so the Indians were selling out Jacobs field for a few seasons instead of playing to a half-full Memorial Stadium, etc. Even more night games (teams like Texas that play almost a full home schedule at night). '90s economic boom (the '50s had the Ike boom - but people were moving to areas that didn't have teams at the time, rather than booming where they already lived).

I don't think the gap's large enough to not be explainable by all these factors.

And most of those people are Bob Feller.

Seriously, old-timers usually talk out of their ass. The smarter ones are aware of it.

Look at the Dodgers and Giants attendance their last few years in NY sometime. Makes the Expos look viable. The Golden Age sheen is largely applied with paint, by everything from jock broadcasters to Ken Burns to HBO's "When It Was a Game" [sic].