Technology, Politics, and Baseball
by NIH sports correspondent Duff "Twilley" Wilmott
The exploits of Ichiro Suzuki in the recently completed baseball playoff between the Seattle Mariners and Cleveland Indians caused me to reflect, as I often do, on the role of technology and politics in society. Specifically, I reflected that Mr. Suzuki is playing in the major leagues because of technology and politics.
In the early years of this century, baseball bats were heavy cumbrous affairs more appropriate for stunning cattle than hitting the long ball. Frank Baker earned the sobriquet "Home Run" for knocking an even dozen big flies in a season.
Naturally, that was the era of small ball. Base-stealing was a paramount skill; during the seasons of 1910 to 1919 the average number of bases filched by the stolen-base champion of the National League was 57, while the average American League champion stole 67.
This trend continued into the 1920s. However, two technological changes drastically changed the character of the game. First the baseball bat was given a narrower handle so that it became more flexible; it became essentially the modern baseball bat. Secondly, the ball was juiced.
By the end of the 1920s balls had started flying out of the yard like the kids on bath day. A premium was placed on big, strong players rather than the agile, fleet players who had dominated the game till then. One look at Babe Ruth in the last half of his career shows how unimportant fitness and speed became. The big strong swatters only had to be fit enough to get to the plate and then trot around the bases after parking one.
The effect of these developments shows up in the totals of the stolen-base leaders. In the 1920s, the average number of bases stolen by National League stolen base leaders fell to 46, while in the American League it fell to 40. In the 30s and 40s stolen bases became even less frequent. The average NL stolen-base leader stole 24 bases in the 30s and 27 in the 40s; the average AL leader stole 37 in each of these decades.
By the 1950s the major leagues offered point-to-point baseball. Any batter who got a single waited on first till someone else got a hit, preferably a home run. In 1950 Dom Dimaggio led the American League in stolen bases with a total of 15 (fifteen). That is, the league leader in stolen bases was stealing one about once every ten games.
However, something had happened in 1947 which was destined to bring back the running game. That of course was the racial integration of baseball. Integration consisted of one player in 1947, and the major league teams were slow to bring in more black players, but over the next decade or so the major leagues eventually pillaged the Negro major and minor leagues of their best players.
The Negro Leagues had preserved the running game (perhaps because the punishing schedules and grim working conditions of the Negro Leagues could only be survived by fit players). As the number of black players and coaches in the major leagues grew, stolen base totals started to rise. The return of running began in the late 1950s and was led by two players: Luis Aparicio of the White Sox and Maury Wills of the Dodgers. Mr. Aparicio stole 51 or more bases in four of the six seasons from 1959 to 1964. Mr. Wills stole 50 or more only three times over the same seasons, but in 1962 he broke Ty Cobb's 47-year-old record with a total of 104; he also stole 94 in 1965 for good measure.
The return of the running game was encouraged by a technological development of the early 1960s – Astroturf. When the Houston Astros found that grass would not grow in their new domed stadium, they painted the glass in the roof and installed a carpet. Astroturf then spread throughout the major leagues.
Because Astroturf is laid over concrete, it absorbs less energy than grass and batted balls lose less speed when they bounce off it. In other words, the infielders have to be quick. Of course someone who is quick in the field can usually be quick on the bases, too, and stolen base totals started to rise again.
In the 1950s the average number of bases stolen by the leader in the NL was 32, while in the AL it was 27. In the 1960s these numbers doubled, to 62 in the NL and 52 in the AL. In the 1970s, they went higher, to 73 in the NL and 60 in the AL.
These developments revitalized baseball. We forget these days how forlorn baseball was in the 1950s and early 1960s. Strategy consisted mostly of trying to hit home runs. Attendance was low, and football became the dominant sport in the United States. The running game brought back the crowds. Besides being entertaining in itself, base-stealing encourages hitting by restricting the variety of pitches a pitcher can use and forcing the infielders to stand farther apart.
The 1980s, the decade of Rickey Henderson and Vince Coleman, was the heyday of the running game. The average number of bases stolen by the NL leader in the 80s was 88, while the average in the AL was 86. Mr. Henderson and Mr. Coleman each stole more than 100 bases in three seasons, with Mr. Henderson setting a record of 130, an improvement of more than a third on Ty Cobb's old record of 1915.
Which brings us back to Ichiro Suzuki. I doubt that a player like Mr. Suzuki would have aroused much interest among major league teams in the 1950s. Compared to the behemoths who dominated the game then he looks slight and even weak. A player like him certainly wouldn't have been much help to teams who depended on power hitting rather than baserunning to produce runs.
Mr. Suzuki is playing in the major leagues because American black people fought for their civil rights and because Astroturf replaced grass in ballparks. As a result of the drive for equality, major league baseball acquired players who had been trained to steal bases. Astroturf encouraged base-stealing by requiring quickness in the field.
These days the running game, although it is not languishing, seems to be in decline. The average number of bases stolen by the stolen-base leader in both the NL and AL in the 1990s was 63. That's about the same as back in the 1910s, before power hitting took over, but it is still a sharp drop from the 1980s. The reason again is technology.
One technological change has been the reduction in size of ballparks. Fences are closer to home plate, and the amount of foul territory in new parks has been greatly reduced. Shorter fly balls fly out, as do shorter foul pop flies which in earlier eras would have been caught for outs. The claim that the ball has been juiced once more seem to have little empirical support, but the players look as if they've been juiced. Improvements in fitness training and technology (independent of whatever illegal pharmaceutical hanky-panky may be going on) have created enormous ballplayers for whom the new small parks are about as challenging as a softball field would have been for players of earlier eras. These days you see more home runs to straight-away centre field in a week than you used to see in a season 20 years ago. Okay, you see more than you used to see in ten seasons.
The long ball has always conveniently brought the fans back to baseball when attendance has fallen. When attendance plummeted after the strike in 1994, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa went after Roger Maris's home run record, and now Barry Bonds is pulling them in. Perhaps the baseball of the new millennium offers a better balance of running and hitting – Ty Cobb-style baseball with extra added slugging.
The player that the fans are most in awe of, though, is the mighty Ichiro. There are a few more dimensions to his play than to the pure sluggers'. Alex Rodriguez, the highest-paid player in baseball, can swat them pretty good, but he's got a few other skills, too. I suspect that if the major leagues are going to keep those fans they've brought back, let alone bring back more, they're going to need more players like Ichiro Suzuki and more running.
Technology, Politics, and Baseball © Coolth, 2001
