1997

Darren Daulton

I think probably after my generation, the game is going to change. My generation is the last of the old school.

1978

Frank Robinson

The game today is in serious decline. Television has all but wiped out the minor leagues, where people used to learn how to play baseball, I mean really learn.

1978

Joe Sewell, as reported by Bill James

Observing the 1978 World Series, Joe Sewell offered the opinion that only two members of the '78 Yankees would have been able to make the Yankee team in 1932. And he thought those two, Thurman Munson and Ron Guidry, would both have been in the bullpen.

1965

Gabby Hartnett

The clubs had a greater number of good players in my day than most of the clubs have today. We had two good players at every position. Today that's not the case.

1962

Frankie Frisch

I don't think the major league baseball players of today can be compared to the old-timers. I think the slider is a nickel curve and I detest hearing the modern sissies moan about how it has ruined batting averages.

1961

Ernie Lombardi

Baseball isn't baseball anymore. There are too many young, untried kids in the majors ... they're more interested in making a fast buck than in baseball.

1950s

Al Lopez

The youngsters coming up now just go through the motions necessary to make the play. They should bounce around a little, show some life and zip.

1950

Jimmy Archer, a star of the 1910s

We were better trained for all-around duty and were smater, cleverer and better athletes. Pitchers were pitchers in those days -- not just throwers. They knew the batters and they had wonderful control.

1950

Rogers Hornsby

These modern hitters, they don't know how to hit. They swing at the pitcher's motion instead of concentrating their eyes on the ball.

1948

Joe Williams, a sportswriter

To be named to the Hall is supposedly the highest honor you can bestow on a player. Do they appreciate it? Well, last year we voted four of them into the shrine -- Frank Frisch, Lefty Grove, Carl Hubbell, and Mickey Cochrane -- and not a single one showed up. They just couldn't be bothered. So this year Mr. Ken Smith and his fellow historians can include me out. If being immortalized means nothing to the majestic heroes of the diamond, it means incomparably less to me. The only player to show at Cooperstown last year was Ed Walsh, who was voted in by a special old-timers' committee. Walsh, a 40-game winner for the White Sox in 1908, composed and read a poem for the occasion. In Walsh's day, you see, the ballplayer had a great respect for the game he lived on and with.

1934

Some writer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

There isn't much doubt that the ball player of today is far more mercenary than he was 30 or even 20 years ago. In the last 15 years the major league star has been "in the big money," and to remain there is his first objective.

1926

Fred Clarke, a star of the 1890s-1900s

Baseball has become too sociable in the last few years. I don't know what caused it. Perhaps the high salaries. Perhaps just civilization and its softening influence. Perhaps the umpires are too strict. But the old fight is not in the game, as it used to be.

1924

The Spalding Base Ball Guide, quoting Joe McGinnity, who pitched from 1899 to 1908

The pitchers of the present time are not as good as they were in other days. ... McGinnity calls attention to the faults of the present-day pitchers and is depressed by the fact that so few of them possess a good curve or try to acquire one.

1916

Bill Joyce, who played in the 1890s

This quote, more than any other, could most easily be placed in the sports pages of any newspaper of any other era and be indistinguishable from the drivel that was actually written at the time.

Baseball today is not what it should be. The players do not try to learn all the fine points of the game as in the days of old, but simply try to get by. They content themselves if they get a couple of hits every day or play an errorless game. The first thing they do each morning is to get the papers and look at the hit and error columns. ... The boys go out to the plate, take a slam at the ball, pray that they'll get a hit, and let it go at that. They are not fighting as in the days of old. Whoever heard of a gang of ballplayers after losing going into the clubhouse singing at the top of their voices? That's what happens every day after the games at the present time. ... It makes me weep to think of the men of the old days who played the game and the boys of today. It's positively a shame, and they are getting big money for it, too.

1915

Traditionalists, as reported by Bill James

By 1915, traditionalists were complaining that the hit and run had ruined baseball.

1913

Jim O'Rourke, a pitcher who played in 1883 and '84

There was no paraphernalia in the old days with which one could protect himself. No mitts; no, not even gloves; and masks, why you would have been laughed off the diamond had you worn one behind the bat. In the early days, the pitcher was only 50 feet away from the batsman, and there was no penalizing him if he hit you with the ball.