Alex Belth is on a roll this week, publishing an interview with former player and author Jim Bouton. Here's a part I especially like:

BB: There was an amusing exchange with you and Moose Skowron at the Yankees Old-Timer’s Game in 2001 where he took exception with your feeling that the modern players are superior to the one’s you played with. What makes the current generation of players better?

JB: In terms of the quality of play, the players are just better than we were. They’re bigger, they’re stronger, they’re faster. They are better trained, they have weight training, and personal coaches, they have computers, they have videotapes now to help them with their motions and their batting swings. There are just all sorts of advances that are way ahead of us. But Moose believes, still, that the 1960s were better. I said, “Moose, don’t you remember the Old Timer’s days in Yankee Stadium when we would sit there, in 1962, for example, and Bill Dickey would come in from the 1930s and tell us how much better they were back in the ‘30s. We used to think the guy was an old nut.” I said, “That’s what you look like to player’s today.” There is no way that Bill Dickey was better than Yogi and Mickey and Whitey, and there’s no way that guys today aren’t better than Mickey and Whitey.

BB: What about the argument that is usually put forth by the old guys that the modern players have terrible fundamentals and can’t do the little things to help their team win?

JB: Well, the game has changed. It’s not a bunting game. It’s a home run game. So they have big, strong guys who hit home runs. That’s the way it is. The games are now 14-10. You don’t have as many 2-1 ballgames. So if we walked off the field in 1962 and onto a baseball field today, 40 years later, we would probably be able to score three or four runs by bunting, and hitting and running, and hitting the cut-off man, and moving the runner over, and then we’d lose 14-3.