About the bad call. I agree it was the wrong call, but with all the rage about it I though when I saw the video of it that the runner would have been off by half a mile or something. It was a lot closer than I thought it was going to be with all the people angry about it. It was far from the worse call that has ever been made. It was a bad call and it's very unfortunate it happened in the situation it did though.
I will also through in my hat with the people arguing that we only think pitchers were tougher and more durable "back in the day" because we quickly forget about all the people that flamed out because their arm or shoulder got injured and they were never able to fully recover. Throwing a baseball the way pitchers do is not a natural movement for the human body. The body was also not made to continually take the forces on parts of it that pitching a baseball makes it undergo. The pitcher of the past weren't able to bend the laws of physics any more than pitches can now. Every once in a while there will be a freak of nature, like Cy Young or Randy Johnson, who can undergo high pitch counts every game, and go through abusive pitching patterns and not have any adverse effects from it, or at least have the adverse effects be significantly reduced. (Even then Randy Johnson was in a little different position when it comes to that in the fact he didn't suffer from heavy pitching loads until he was 26 years old which few pitchers have the luxury of.) They are the exception to the rule however.
I will also through in my hat with the people arguing that we only think pitchers were tougher and more durable "back in the day" because we quickly forget about all the people that flamed out because their arm or shoulder got injured and they were never able to fully recover. Throwing a baseball the way pitchers do is not a natural movement for the human body. The body was also not made to continually take the forces on parts of it that pitching a baseball makes it undergo. The pitcher of the past weren't able to bend the laws of physics any more than pitches can now. Every once in a while there will be a freak of nature, like Cy Young or Randy Johnson, who can undergo high pitch counts every game, and go through abusive pitching patterns and not have any adverse effects from it, or at least have the adverse effects be significantly reduced. (Even then Randy Johnson was in a little different position when it comes to that in the fact he didn't suffer from heavy pitching loads until he was 26 years old which few pitchers have the luxury of.) They are the exception to the rule however.