re: How would Babe Ruth fare in the steroid era?

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The Babe is, sure, one of the best rye whiskey drinkers of all time, but how would he fare in this new Fireball era?

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I'm reminded of an anecdote from Bill James about the Tigers 2B, Charlie Gehringer. After a game against the Indians in 1936, Gehringer was asked who threw harder: Bob Feller or Walter Johnson? Gehringer was one of the few hitters who played long enough to face both pitchers. Gehringer replied that Johnson unquestionably threw harder. Since Johnson was in the twilight of his career when Gehringer faced him while Feller was 17, that statement seemed to clearly indicate that Johnson must have thrown much harder than Feller at his peak. But that really isn't the case. Gehringer faced Johnson when he was a 23-year-old rookie. He wasn't used to hitting against major league pitchers so a fastball from Johnson probably seemed like 100+ MPH. When Gehringer hit against Feller, he had been in the big leagues for 10+ years and was used to hitting against the best pitchers in the world. So even if Feller threw harder than Johnson, his fastball wouldn't appear to be as fast or difficult to hit.

And that's how I view this situation. All of the great old-time position players would be awful in the beginning trying to adjust to the velocity of current major league fastballs and movement of the breaking balls. But if you give them enough at-bats, their hand-eye coordination will get used to the movement and velocity and they would probably do just fine. Now would they be as dominant as they were back in their day? Certainly not. But they would be good enough to be on a major league roster.