A discussion on Facebook the other day -- combined with a PBS documentary on Roberto Clemente last night -- got me thinking about how packed full of stars 1970s Major League Baseball was.

Maybe the same is true today, but I don't see it. That could be a function of my age. At 40-something, I enjoy watching baseball, but I don't spend a lot of time obsessing about learning players' names and stats and keeping track of trades.

But in the '70s, I was a nut. I rabidly collected and traded and flipped baseball cards. I watched Mets games on Channel 9 and we knew who was who. And I could even tell Kiner from Nelson from Murphy. And I knew where Gil Hodges' widow lived (on Bedford Avenue). And I knew the majority of the rosters of the teams.

But I posit -- and I may be wrong -- that it was easier to remember those guys back then.

It was easier, in part, because there were fewer teams, of course, and players tended to stay with teams longer.

But who could forget Luis Tiant and Vida Blue and Al Oliver and Carl Yastrzemski and Buddy Harrelson and Pete Rose and Hank Aaron and Willie Mays and Rod Carew and Clemente and on and on and on?

These were guys with memorable names, identifiable quirks and in many cases, crazy-ass afros and mutton chops. And they looked great in the cool uniforms of the first half of the decade. (Let's not talk about what came later ... yes, Pirates, I'm looking you and those ridiculous hats!)

Nowadays it seems most guys are memorable for their salaries or whether or not they were implicated in steroid scandals.

I know I'm not the best person to judge whether or not today's players match up favorably, since like nearly all of us, I've come to realize that the world I remember from my youth is blanketed with the fog of unreliable memory and the haze of nostalgia.

For a trustworthy answer about today's baseball stars, I've got to ask pre-teens, who a few decades from now, will likely think the players they grew up were cooler than the stars their kids watch play.