Baseball: Home Run Totals Back To Normal?

Stan Olson of the Charlotte Observer looks at the numbers.

Baseball has a long history, so you can see trends that sometimes encompass decades. There was the Dead Ball Era, for example, in which you played for hits, advanced the runner, and tried to get him home with another hit. Defense was as important as offense in this game.

The live-ball era started around 1920 and was personified by Babe Ruth. Hitters started swinging for the fences, and records were established for home runs and RBI's that stood for decades. Batting averages suffered a little, but not too much.

Pitchers began to get their own back when the slider became prevalent in the late 1940's. Only the best hitters (Ted Williams, for example) were able to maintain high averages in the era of the slider. Pitchers continued to do well as smaller, older ballparks were replaced by doughnut-shaped superstadiums that were designed for both football and baseball. Baseball went into a long, boring period starting in the 60's that emphasized pitching over hitting. Batting averages were way down.

In the 90's a couple of things occurred that moved baseball back to favoring hitters: smaller, baseball-only stadiums began to replace the superstadiums, and players discovered steroids. Suddenly you saw lots of players with huge bodies and tiny heads who jumped their home run totals by astonishing degrees. It was typified by Barry Bonds, who went from a slim young man to a bloated behemoth. It turned the fans off to see this sort of obvious gaming of the baseball system, so after a few years of this exciting home run baseball, fans lost their interest. The attitude when Bonds broke Henry Aaron's home run record was Who Cares?

Now it looks like we're entering another quiet period of honest play. Baseball, once the exclusive domain of white men, later became dominated by talented black players, and these days is diverse indeed, with hispanic, Australian, Dutch and Japanese players all making their mark in Major League Baseball.