Strike Zone a Hot Topic : Baseball: Either too big, too small, too high or too low, it’s always a source of controversy.

The world is full of gray areas. That fuzzy line between right and wrong. That gap on the speedometer between 55 m.p.h. and the speed that gets you pulled over on the highway. Cleveland before they built Jacobs Field.

The baseball world is full of them, too, and none has created more conversation and controversy than that theoretical polygon box known as the strike zone.

It is too big. It is too small. It is getting too narrow. It is far too wide. It is always changing. It hasn’t changed in years. It depends entirely on who’s doing the talking.

One thing is certain. The amount of talk about the strike zone has increased dramatically this year, as the fans and the media search for the most logical explanation for the startling upturn in offensive production.

Is the strike zone getting smaller, or are the hitters just getting bigger? Inquiring minds want to know.

“I think everybody’s just looking for the answer to all the home runs,” said the Detroit Tigers’ Mickey Tettleton, “but I’ve seen balls called strikes that shouldn’t be and some called balls that should have been strikes.”

The umpires say they are making no concerted effort to change the dimensions of the strike zone. The notion that there is some grand conspiracy to increase offensive production to benefit the new television contract was shot down during the “juiced ball” debate and has not resurfaced. The umpires say they are going about their jobs the same way they have for years, and have not been instructed to do otherwise.

“There has been no conscious effort to change the strike zone in the last three or four years,” said veteran American League umpire Jim Evans. “Three years ago, we experimented with calling the high strike in spring training, but nobody wanted it. That pitch is considered a mistake. What the pitchers want is a wider plate.”

The hitters say the pitchers are getting that, so there certainly is no consensus on the supposedly shrinking strike zone. Umpires do appear to call a lot of strikes that are off the outside corner, though Evans says that is a perception that is exaggerated by the angle of the center-field camera and complicated by the popular notion that the entire ball has to be inside the imaginary plane that projects upward from the outer edge of the plate.

“The ball doesn’t have to be entirely on the plate, and the camera is 40 to 50 feet off center,” Evans said. “If it was perfectly centered, you’d be blocked out. You wouldn’t be able to see the catcher because it would be right behind the pitcher.”

The umpires also say that the center-field camera gives a distorted view of the height of some pitches, which adds to the impression that they do not call anything above the belt a strike.

“You watch on TV, and everything looks waist high and below,” Evans said. “That’s camera angle.”

If the strike zone has evolved in the past few years, it may be a matter of shape rather than size. Some umpires -- perhaps in response to pressure to speed up play -- do appear to be trading the higher strike for a slightly wider plate. Instead of a vertical rectangle, the zone seems to have become more of a square.

“It’s definitely getting smaller,” said California Angels left-hander Chuck Finley. “They talk about the juiced ball. It (the ball) might be a little harder, but the inside part of the plate has been taken away. That makes you approach the game a little differently.” Difference of opinion

“It’s getting larger,” said Angels hitting coach Rod Carew. “You look at some of those overhead camera shots and see balls six inches outside getting called for strikes.”

There is the debate in a nutshell. Competing interests tend to view an issue from different angles, just as the television broadcasters are employing a slightly skewed view from that center-field camera.

“I can’t say it’s bigger and I can’t say it’s smaller,” said Angels designated hitter Chili Davis, a surprising voice of reason in this polarized debate. “I think it’s just inconsistent. I don’t think an argument about the size of the strike zone is going to stand up if you’ve got hitters and pitchers both complaining about it.”

Though no one will admit to a concerted effort to change the strike zone in the past few years, no one denies that it has evolved throughout the history of baseball. There was a time early in the 20th century when anything under the chin was considered a strike, but the top end of the strike zone now is about four or five inches above the belt.

The last time it clearly changed was when American League umpires abandoned “balloon” chest protectors in 1985. Before the chest protector was standardized, the American League generally was considered a high-ball league and the National League was considered a low-ball league.

The big, outside chest protectors forced American League umpires to stand right over the catcher and look straight down on the plate, which created a more vertical zone. The smaller, inside-the-shirt protectors allowed umpires to crouch down and view the pitch through the “slot” between the catcher and the batter, which seemed to widen the outside half of the plate.

“In the American League, the umpire would call anything up to the top of that chest protector,” said Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, who managed nine years in the National League before beginning his 15-year tenure with Detroit. “Now, there’s really no difference.”

American League umpires concede that the different stance produced a significantly different strike zone, but that was nearly a decade ago.

“When the AL umpires wore the outside protector, the strike zone was higher,” said umpire Joe Brinkman, who has been in the league since 1973. “But I don’t think it has changed recently.

“I think what is happening is that you’ve got a lot of ex-pitchers in the broadcast booth who have been away from the game for a while and remember getting that (high) pitch. They are just telling it like it was when they were playing.”

There was an abortive attempt to enlarge the strike zone three years ago, when then-American League president Bobby Brown sent out a spring training directive to the umpires to call higher strikes. The experiment did not get out of spring training, however, because neither the pitchers nor the hitters really wanted that pitch called.

Sounds strange, but it’s true. Pitchers did not want the high strike.

“They applied that new strike zone, giving pitchers the high strike, which we didn’t want,” Finley said. “I don’t want that, because it gets hitters thinking about hitting up there.”

The directive, which was spawned by the clamor to speed up games, quietly was rescinded before opening day and discussion of the strike zone diminished until the offensive explosion of 1994 rekindled the debate.

There is no perfect strike zone. It is an imaginary space that exists in the mind of each umpire and has to be adjusted to fit a wide variety of hitting styles and stances.

“People look at the rulebook and the diagram,” said American League supervisor of umpires Marty Springstead, “but that guy (in the diagram) never moves. That’s the perfect strike zone, but there are so many variables that go into the thing.

“The key thing to remember is, the strike zone only exists when the guy (hitter) is offering at the ball at the plate, not when he’s standing there waiting on the pitcher. Rickey Henderson comes up from his crouch at that moment. Dave Winfield comes down.”

The umpire has to adjust to each hitter -- and the hitters and pitchers have to adjust to each umpire -- which is nothing new in a game that is based on continual adjustment.

Most pitchers say they don’t care where the strike zone is, as long as each umpire establishes a consistent one. The hitters are a bit more legalistic about the dimensions, but they also know they must learn each umpire and adapt to his strike zone.

The bottom line is this: It is a game played and officiated by human beings, each with a distinct style and personality.

It is not a perfect science, and no amount of tinkering or technology is likely to change that without affecting the very heart and soul of the sport.

“If there was a better way to do this over the last 100 years,” Springstead said, “they would have found it.”