Tuesday was the anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke through the color barrier, courtesy of the foresight of Branch Rickey. No longer was baseball purely the domain of the white guys.

This got me thinking about all those great old-timey players that we lionize today. The ones that virtually none of us every saw live and the ones in which only a few grainy, choppy videos exist, if at all. The greatest Pirate of all time is presumed to be shortstop Honus Wagner, who played from 1897 to 1917. His career triple slash line over his 21-year career is .328 BA/.391 OBP/.467 SLG, good for 138 Wins Above Replacement. His wRC+ (Weighted Runs Created above average) was 147, meaning he produced 47% more runs than his contemporaries. Not only is he the greatest Pirate of all time, but he’s on the short list for most people as the greatest shortstop of all time.

Walter “Big Train” Johnson is widely regarded as one of the best pitchers of all time. He pitched from 1907 to 1927 and amassed a record of 417-279 with a 2.17 ERA over 5,914 innings pitched. He had an outstanding 110 shutouts and a mind-blowing 531 complete games from his 666 starts. Johnson put up 123.9 Wins Above Replacement during his career.

And neither of them ever faced a black pitcher or hitter. Or a Latino pitcher or hitter. Don’t even bother wondering if they ever squared off against an Asian player.

Baseball was a different game back then before integration. It wasn’t a glamorous career where the players were handsomely rewarded. Many worked offseason jobs just to make ends meet. There was no such thing as offseason training. The closest it came to training, both in-season and out of it, was cutting back on the number of whiskys consumed or cigarettes smoked.

The teams were composed mostly of sandlot players, drunks, and hanger-ons. Playing with a hangover was the norm and there were few players who could be called athletes in the truest sense of the word. The players who were stars, such as Wagner and Johnson, were like gods among mortals.

If you had a time machine and could pluck Wagner and Johnson out of their primes and plop them into Major League Baseball, how would they fare? I imagine not well at all. Today’s players are physical specimens that are far stronger, faster, and more conditioned than any player these guys faced. Wagner is listed at 5′-11″ and Johnson at 6′-1″. For their respective positions, that’s considered short by today’s metrics.

As per this Sports Illustrated piece about the best power pitchers, Johnson’s fastball was never properly measured, “but in 1914, his fastball was measured against a speeding motorcycle and estimated at 97 mph.” That’s a thoroughly unreliable anecdote, but it at least shows that Johnson had some gas to his heat. He probably didn’t have much, if anything, in the way of an offspeed pitch or breaking ball. Who needs it when you can just blow the doors off someone?

This is the issue with comparing players from different eras to determine who is the Greatest of All Time. You can’t do it. Johnson and Wagner could carve out decent careers in 2014 via the time machine, but there’s no way they would put up the numbers they did in their true careers. The worst player on a roster in 2014 would probably be no worse than the 2nd or 3rd best player on a roster in the 1920’s.

The gauzy romanticism of bygone eras, whether it’s the 1920’s of Wagner and Johnson, or the 1970’s of the We Are Family Pirates is best served as just being a remembrance. The players of 2014 are better athletes and players than those players of the past. One day we’ll be saying the same thing about the players of 2014 compared to baseball players in the future.