Quote:
Originally Posted by DougWyatt
Naa, lotsa people are fast. Faster than Rickey. He was just uncanny when it came to thievery.
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Lots of people are fast. Just check out a D-I track meet. But Ted Ginn isn't Ted Ginn because he's fast. He's a much more well-rounded athlete.
Anyway, I'm not saying Ted Ginn would have been the next Rickey Henderson. I'm just saying we'll never know. And we'll never know about hundreds of elite athletes every year who pick other sports over baseball in the transition from HS to college or from college to the professional ranks. One thing I've realized since I started casually following college recruiting is that a lot of very good prospects (in football especially) are also top baseball prospects. It's just that they almost always pick football--guys like Desean Jackson and Jake Christiensen. And they are top baseball prospects coming out of HS despite dedicating a lot of their formative athletic careers to sports other than baseball. That wouldn't have been the case in Ruth's day. They would have played baseball growing up and most likely
only baseball. And they would have chosen baseball as a profession.