I think that Mike Celezik, columnist for MSNBC.com, mostly gets it wrong in this recent column about the sport of baseball living in the past. The crux of Celezik's point is that Barry Bonds might be better than Babe Ruth--a point worth arguing, as Bonds is certainly the greatest player of my lifetime.

But where Celezik goes wrong is in misunderstanding baseball's attachment to and veneration for its past. He sees is as some sort of antiquarian sentimentalism, like parents who are always complaining about "the music these kids are listening to these days." He says:

It is the only sport that keeps telling its fans that, yes, this fellow is pretty good, but another guy who played 40 years ago was better. Why bother going to the park if the best has already happened? Why bother paying attention if the great players of today are but shadows of those who went before?

In contrast to the stuck-in-the-past traditionalism of baseball, Celezik celebrates the modernity of the other major sports, which recognize that their players keep getting better and better:

The one thing that is certain is that 40 years from now, [Michael] Jordan will not be the greatest player ever. That’s because basketball celebrates the present and recognizes that the game and the skills involved in it evolve; that the competition gets tougher; that the athletes are bigger and stronger and faster with each passing year.

It’s the same with football. The NFL doesn’t try to sell you a game that was played 50 years ago. It sells the game and the players who you are watching now. Jim Brown is still to many the greatest running back ever, but he’s not football’s Babe Ruth; you won’t be grilled for breakfast for saying Walter Payton or even Emmitt Smith was better.

Celezik, like all non-baseball fans who attempt to write about the sport, misses the point entirely. Because he doesn't understand what baseball or its appeal is, he simply sees its historical sense as a backward-looking inferiority to the other major sports.

However, baseball fans have long recognized a basic fact that Celezik fails to see, and it accounts for much of the popularity of baseball as well as its historical sense: one does not have to be a physical freak to play the game of baseball at its highest level. Shaquille O'Neal, at 7 foot 3, is a physical freak. He's a genetic anomaly. Even Michael Jordan at 6'6" is a relative freak. How many people do you know who are 6'6"? Yes, this generation of basketball players is better than any in history. But they are also much larger and taller on average than their counterparts of 40 years ago in a game that is designed to favor the large and the tall.

Same with football. Yes, the football players of today are probably the best ever, overall. But it was not even 20 years ago that William "The Refrigerator" Perry, defensive tackle for the NFL's Chicago Bears, was considered to be a freak at around 350 lbs. He got entire endorsement deals just based on his size. Now, college football players routinely weigh in at that level, and even some high school players tilt the scales at a similar heft.

In the early 80's, Heismann trophy winner Doug Flutie was widely considered way too small to be an effective NFL quarterback at 5'10", and was only the 285th player drafted in 1985. Yet only a generation before, Hall of Famer Sonny Jurgenson was 5'11". Hall of Famers Y.A. Tittle and Fran Tarkenton were only 6'0". The difference was that the players have since gotten demonstrably bigger in a game which favors the exceedingly large.

Yet in baseball, Barry Bonds is no bigger physically (at least framewise--the girth is another issue) than Babe Ruth was 70 years ago. Sure, the players are in better shape now due to modern training techniques, but they are not bringing any different raw materials with them then they were a century ago. A 6'5" player in baseball has no inherent advantage over a 5'6" player. Which is precisely why history is so venerated in baseball: you can compare players now with players from other generations. The other sports, lacking this, are forced to divorce themselves from their past. How do you compare Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to George Mikan? Michael Jordan to Bob Cousy? Orlando Pace to Dan Dierdorf?

Baseball's connection with its own history is a large part of its appeal. In baseball, you can compare Barry Bonds to Babe Ruth. You can get a decent idea of what Christy Mathewson would do now if he were pitching in this era, and what Albert Pujols would do if he were playing against the '27 Yankees. It's the continuity of the game over time, using skills that don't depend on physical size, that makes baseball a game of historical perspective. Those who are only interested in the here-and-now should confine themselves to the 30-second-attention-span world of the NFL and stop trying to turn baseball into something it isn't.

Could baseball improve its appeal to the current generation of fans? Absolutely--but not by becoming a slower version of the NFL or the NBA. Instead, it ought to do everything it can to encourage comparisons between Barry Bonds and Babe Ruth, between the Greats of Baseball Past and the Greats of Baseball Present. It's the comparison to Ruth that gives Barry Bonds some of his greatness. Why would anyone want to reject that for the today-is-all-that-matters world of professional basketball?