Baseball is the best arguing game. If you're passionate about baseball, you argue. It's not even optional. Everything is a potential argument in baseball. Were the seventies better than the nineties? Were the fifties as good as the seventies? Will there ever be a season as glorious as 1961?

Do football fans ever argue about the old days? Or even discuss them? I mean, who'd bother comparing the NFL of 1995 with the NFL of 1955? Every player at every position in the NFL today is seven inches taller and outweighs those old-timers by 100 pounds. They're not even playing the same game.

The difference in basketball is even more dramatic. Look at film of the NBA in the fifties -- it's laughable. Two-handed set shots. Vertical leaps of a foot. It was slow, it was earthbound -- it was basketball before the Wright brothers, before we learned to fly on Air Jordan.

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But baseball retains much more of its old character. Basically, baseball hasn't changed; you can defensibly compare Ken Griffey Jr. to Mickey Mantle. You can compare their batting styles, you can compare them as center fielders. Their careers were almost thirty years apart, yet it's the same game, there's a real connection. But that connection, for all but the very best players, makes the differences in size, speed, and strength very apparent.

Some baseball arguments last a lifetime. I remember Larry King telling me about a dispute he has with his best friend, Herbie Cohen. Larry and Herbie have been friends since they were six years old -- despite the fact that when they were growing up in Brooklyn, Larry was a Dodger fan, while Herbie rooted for the Yankees.

Since the 1950s, Larry and Herbie have been arguing who was the better center fielder, Mantle or Duke Snider. Now, Larry is the host of the most-watched talk show in the world, and Herbie is a best-selling author. It's fifty years later. And they're still arguing who's better, Snider or Mantle.

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