Congratulations, but...
-Pitching dilution due to expansion
-Lower pitcher’s mound
-No called strikes above the waist..
Just sayin’.
Back in the day baseball and other sports had dignity. Today they are an embarrassment to our nation.
Records broken? Nobody cares.
Every era is different. 661 home runs is more than I could hit on Ninetendo. Give it a rest.
Baseball has seen lots of changes, which have triggered many debates such as you touch on.
People say Babe Ruth never played a night game, and seldom faced multiple relief pitchers, or 9th inning closers, because in his day, starting pitchers finished the game.
Some have said that Babe didn’t face the best pitchers of his era, because black ballplayers weren’t allowed in the majors then.
Some have talked about how Babe didn’t have to deal with the rigors of coast to coast travel, crossing multiple time zones, and the stresses that puts on players.
But then others say, as you point out, pitching is diluted nowadays with so many expansion teams, so in Babe’s era of only 16 major league teams, every pitcher he faced was top notch compared to today’s.
Then again, Yankee Stadium had a short right field foul line and right center power alley, which helped Babe’s totals.
Boston’s Fenway Park was just the opposite in right field, with deeper right and right center, making it harder for Ted Williams to hit home runs. Then again, Ted lost several years to World War 2 and Korea, so who knows how many he would have it if he could have played those years.
Willie Mays lost almost two years to military service as a young man.
It all depends on which criteria people want to talk about, as they compare players from different eras, and talk of the significance of all time records or single season records.
It makes for lively debate which never quite get resolved.
Steroids...
Just addin’. If not in Pujols’s case, at least in Bonds and Rodriguez’s.