THE SCOURGE OF HOMER BALL

THE SCOURGE OF HOMER BALL
By Dick Meister

Is it finally over, the hoopla over baseball slugger Barry Bonds setting a
new record for career home runs? Is there now a chance that the National
Pastime will regain its status as a complex game of many dimensions rather
than a one-dimensional game of home run derby?

Bam! Barry blasts yet another one over the fence! Thousands cheer! Fireworks
shoot high into the outfield sky! Fans’ cameras flash! Shouting! Screaming!
Noise! Lots of noise!

Of course, many fans like all those balls flying out of the park. Pretty
exciting stuff. But damned simplistic. It’s what writer Nicholas Dawidoff
described as “dumbed-down, muscle-bound entertainment” – a version of
baseball that obscures the nuances and subtleties that make the game what it
is. Or should be.

Listen to what Frankie Crosetti, New York Yankee shortstop for 17 years,
third base coach for 20, had to say about the impact homer-blasting has had
on one of the game’s most important finer points:

“When a player is on second base with no outs, it is the next batter’s
duty, by hook or crook, to give himself up and try to advance the runner to
third base. But it is seldom that a right-handed batter will try to push the
ball to right field to advance the runner. And most left-handed hitters will
not try to drag or pull the ball to advance the runner.

“They only swing from their heels, wanting to hit the ball out of the
ballpark and over the moon as well. With all these homeruns being hit, it
makes a lousy game of it. The great game of baseball is going down the tube
from all these home runs.”

Crosetti, ironically, was once a teammate of Babe Ruth, whose prodigious
home run production was largely responsible for making the once-rare homer a
key strategic weapon – that and Major League Baseball’s attempt to revive
fan interest after the stunning disclosure that the 1919 World Series had
been fixed by gamblers.

Ruth, who in 1919 hit what was then a spectacular total of 29 homers, nearly
doubled his output to 54 the next year, then in 1921 bashed 59. The home run
derby was on. And though it wasn’t until many years later that any player
surpassed Ruth’s record totals – 60 in a season, set in 1927, and a career
high of 714 – many players tried. Homers became commonplace, and baseball
became Homer Ball.

The illegal ingestion of steroids cited as a main reason for today’s soaring
home run totals is only a recent development. Ruth and those sluggers
chasing his records in the past weren’t juicing up their bodies, unless
you count the booze favored by many, Ruth prominent among them. But Major
League Baseball was juicing up the baseball itself, putting a more lively
rubber core in the center and otherwise making certain the ball would soar
farther than it ever had, even farther than the Babe himself had ever sent
it.

It was the beginning of what baseball historians like to call the Lively
Ball Era, which got even livelier about a dozen years ago, when
baseball’s fan-hungry team owners juiced up the ball even more.

You can also blame the steady increase in homers since then on the new
stadiums with shorter, homer-friendly distances to the fences. And blame the
addition of new Major League franchises that have had little choice but to
sign mediocre pitchers, given the limited number of quality pitchers
available. And, of course, there are steroids.

Hopefully, the reduction in steroid use sought by MLB will slow down the
homer bashing that has so badly corrupted baseball. But if that’s not
enough, we could demand that ballpark fences be moved back – preferably way
back.

Better yet would be the remedy suggested by baseball historian Hermann
Muelder, who thinks home run balls hit over the fence should be declared
foul balls like any others hit out-of-play.

That’s perfectly consistent with the rules of baseball, Muelder notes, since
“in scoring it’s not what happens to the ball that makes the score. It’s
what happens to the player.” In basketball, for example, the player must put
the ball through a hoop to score, but in baseball the player must cross home
plate.

I’d go even further than Muelder. If I had my way, anyone hitting a ball
over the fence would be automatically out. A pretty drastic step, sure. But
we must take drastic steps if we are to free the nation from the scourge of
Homer Ball.

Copyright © 2007 Dick Meister

Story ID:	2691
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	San Francisco CA USA
Year:	2007
Person:	Barry Bonds