The alleged smoke screen is drugs, the scapegoats are players which the powers in charge, aided by an anti-minority National Administration-the people who gave us the destruction of our Constitution and Bill of Rights and a bogus war, may well be accessories before and after the fact, helping to hide a massive fraud.
Mounds lowered by eleven inches, balls so lively my grandmother can hit them out of the park, expansions spreading a rare talent too thin, making truly talented pitchers rarer than a perfect yellow or blue diamond, and umpires squeezing the plate for some pitchers and expanding it for others, only, one might think, a fool could miss the reality.
3)-Thinly stretched pitching staffs, strained by the expansion of s from 16 teams to 30 teams, and then lowering of the mounds from 18 inches to 15 inches and finally to the 10-inch height, hitters currently enjoy, would give hitters several legs up on pitchers. It did and the percentage of sore armed pitchers straining to get men out, burgeoned along with homerun totals.
Can you even imagine what Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio and Ralph Kiner, would do with a pitcher throwing off a 10-inch mound, with a souped-up baseball, and umpires squeezing the strike zone? The mounds were lowered when Bob Gibson (a black pitcher) had an unprecedented year (1961 when everyone was hitting homeruns with the frequency of singles) of 13 shutouts on his way to a 1.12 ERA. Great pitching and 1-0 scores do not bring in the crowds. High scores, lots of home runs... and of course, Janette Jackson, do, so they lowered the mound to almost half its previous height. Goodbye low ERA's! I called 1961, The Dave Cash Phenomenon, Season.
What about the contention that steroid intake allowed players to break records? Really? Ken Caminiti said at least 55% of the players used steroids (most of which were NOT illegal). Jose Canseco said 85% of players used them. Well, there were many mediocre players who had convincingly mediocre years after taking steroids, so why didn't THEY all hit 73 home runs in one season and 756 lifetime? Because Steroids don't help anyone in baseball do anything but pick up girls in bars who like muscular men, in fact at the end of this article you will see evidence that steroids in a game like baseball are a hindrance to good performance.
One thing is clear, only a fool or a blind man would have trouble understanding the simplicity of new strike zone. It is simple, like poetry, and a politician's speech, the strike zone was open to each individual umpire's interpretation. No longer. Here is a guide to the new strike zone: If the home team is up, the strike zone is from the top of his belt to the bottom of his belt, and half as wide. When the visiting team is up, the strike zone is from the ankles to a foot above the bill of their caps, and from one foot behind them to the dugout.
Now back to the physical aspects of long ball hitting. The surge of long ball hitting has more to do with mechanics of the game like ball/strike calls (and several other factors).
Contrary to speculation, by blabber-mouthed, sport, talk-show hosts, steroids and bulging, fat muscles, do not improve the skills for consistently hitting 100 MPH sliders and fastballs, either consistently or far. The skills needed are: Extremely fine vision, like 20/10 or 20/05, superhuman reflexes, and superlative eye/hand (SEHC) coordination, not weight or bulked-up muscles. Bulking up on steroids actually slows neuro-muscular reaction time and makes swings herky/jerky, plodding and inaccurate.
Steroids can make a person stronger, and even make them bray like a donkey, and constantly bump into water coolers, but cannot improve bat speed, vision, or the other requisites, and they, most certainly, cannot help a person hit major league pitching any better or with more frequency, nor can they help a pitcher place his pitches on demand, on the spot more often and with better "stuff." In fact, bat speed is, now watch and read this very carefully, steroids encumber (slow down) reflexes as the enable muscle blobbing. Thickly muscled arms and bodies are s l o w e r, than long, smooth muscles. Reaction time is s l o w e r, in brains to muscles, and unleashing lightening fast eye-hand coordination, which together with 20/10 or better vision, not bulk, makes a great hitter. Bulk and steroids, interfere with eye-hand coordination, slow the wit and reaction time for coordinated pinpoint direction of a bat at great bat speed. In short, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Mark McGuire, if they did use steroids, did not break records because of steroids, but in spite of them. Of course, sycophantic physicians and pharmacists who sing for their pay will sing in opposition to truth every time. So when you see them contradicting what I just said, give them the appropriate finger
However, a livelier baseball can cause a hitter to increase his home run frequency about 68%, from one homerun each 21+ at bats to 1 every 6.5 at bats- (Barry Bonds in his 73 home run year). However, if that lively ball hits a player in the head, he most certainly, then may begin to bray like a donkey anyway, and maybe even dress like one, but with a sillier, permanent, toothy grin on his face.
However, no one ever complained about the fact that every single player who ever appeared on a Wheaties cereal box led his league in hitting or pitching, so why aren't Wheaties on the banned list? (Although my cousin ate Wheaties every day for six months, and hit only his shoe size that year, but on the bright side, he never was constipated.)
Bonds intake of Bovine Growth Formula (if that isn't also a fiction), makes him equal to the rest of us (In Bovine Growth Formula intake, at least). As I said earlier, here are Bovine Growth drugs in all beef and most other non-organic meats, placed there by cattle growers with no objection from the government, and in our water supplies as well. If the Bonds ever have another child and it appears mooing then we will know he is guilty, but until then, he is innocent in the eyes of the law, and he is probably innocent anyway. Anyway, I like Barry Bonds; he knows how to handle the press.
A friend who tried steroids and was arrested recently for dressing like an Ocelot and trying to sell celery to a wooden, Tobacco store, Indian, upon St. Crispin's Day.
Thus, the sharp increase in power numbers is due far more to the liveliness of the SuperBall-baseball, the increase in teams in the leagues, thus dilution of available pitching talent, and the lowering of pitching mounds and perhaps to an extra bowl of Wheaties every day, at least it will keep one regular. Keep one thing in mind; hundreds of professional and amateur baseball players were implicated in the use of steroids, why didn't they break records? Keep firmly in mind that I am a physical anthropologist, and I dated a bevy of super models, so I know quite a bit about the human body and how it reacts to certain chemicals and certain girls, too.
The idea that ties go to the runner, may have been the seed for the owners allegedly instructing the chief umpires that ties go to the home team on close calls, and then later amending that to say, as soon as a weakness is spotted in the visiting team, exploit it to the home team's advantage unless we say otherwise, or that failing, start spiking the water cooler and pumpkin seeds supplies of the visitors with Prozac and their towels with Chloroform.
Professor Bagnolo is a Renaissance man: Cultural Anthropologist, Architectural designer, painter, writer, novelist, theologian. As a child prodigy, abed with polio for almost two years, with an off the charts IQ, reading at the graduate level by 5th grade, offered an opportunity to skip three grades at age 8. Later He was a recipient of an Art Institute scholarship at age 11, a Ford Foundation Fellowship in Anthropology and in Painting and a merit scholarship in art, and was appointed a Graduate Research Assistant position in college. He holds a triple bachelor's degree in Painting and Drawing, Anthropology, Architectural Design Advertising. MA's in Cultural Anthro, Painting and more. After being tenured he taught; architecture, anthropology, Theology, advertising, painting and drawing, entrepreneuring and Creative Profit Making. He produced a star-studded Music festival, had a radio talk show in Chicago, and cable TV show. Now, retired from Teaching, he paints, writes, and pursues other ventures.
The above bio harvested from the comments of Deans, colleagues, students, clients and collector's.
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