Everyone Is Hitting ‘Em Deep

In 1927, the year he hit 60, Babe Ruth hit his 12th home run by May 28.

In 1996, the year he will hit God knows how many, Albert Belle hit his 21st home run by May 28.

But that’s nothing. . . .

--Henry Rodriguez, who had never hit more than eight home runs in a major league season, was also ahead of Ruth’s pace--he had 18.

--Nine National League sluggers and 10 American Leaguers were ahead of Ruth’s record, and this included Jay Buhner of Seattle and Brady Anderson of Baltimore.

--Rex Hudler of the Angels had 30 hits as of May 28 and nine of them--almost one out of three--were home runs.

--Everybody, it seemed, was hitting three home runs in a single day--Belle, Cal Ripken Jr., Ken Griffey Jr., Geronimo Berroa, to name some.

What is going on here?! Give us a look at that ball, ump! Is it legal? Is it ticking? If you found it lying in the road, would you call the bomb squad?

It’s ballistic, all right. Just look at the numbers. Baseballs are flying out of ballparks like popping corn.

When Babe Ruth hit 60 homers, he was breaking his own record of 59, hit in ’21. Before Ruth’s first season, the most home runs hit in the league had been 12 by a worthy dubbed “Home Run” Baker.

Ruth changed the game forever. Before Ruth, it was played with a kind of complicated beanbag and 52-ounce bats that looked more like wagon tongues than athletic equipment. The home run was considered a kind of freak incident occurring rarely in nature, like the hole in one in golf or the 90-yard touchdown in football.

The moguls found the home run did more than break seats. It filled them. With customers. The game was never the same again.

It was no trick for their engineers to beef up the baseball. Before you knew it, Hank Greenberg and Jimmie Foxx were hitting 58 homers a year and Hack Wilson was hitting 56.

They periodically deadened the ball when matters seemed to be getting out of hand. Baseball is a scandalous old harlot. Some franchises move fences out when they get a good pitching staff. Bill Veeck used to change his every night to nullify whatever advantages the visitors had. They wet the grounds. They’ve been known to tilt the baselines. They built ballparks around franchise players. Yankee Stadium was known as the House That Ruth Built, but it was more like the House That Was Built for Ruth. Right field was 298 feet away; Ruth could reach it with handle hits.

So doctoring the ball was child’s play. No one has ever copped out to doing it, but the DNA evidence was inescapable--all you had to do was study the statistics.

In 1930, for example, a curious pattern emerged: In the National League, six of the eight teams had team batting averages above .300 and one (the New York Giants) batted .319.

Last year, not one of the big league teams--and there are now 28 of them--had a batting average in excess of .291.

The Philadelphia Phillies in 1930 had almost an entire lineup of guys batting over .300--and one of them (Lefty O’Doul) was batting .383 and another (Chuck Klein), .386. Bill Terry of the Giants led the loop at .401, the last NL batsman to reach .400. The batter next to him that year (Brooklyn’s Babe Herman) hit .393.

Chicago’s Wilson hit 56 home runs that year, still the National League high, and he drove in 190 runs, still the major league high.

The baseball high command throttled the ball back the next year before the entire league pitching corps needed psychiatry.

The status of the home run is clear. Only the purists like 1-0 games. In and of itself, the home run is not a barn-burner. The solo home run puts a murmur through the crowd. But it is the anticipation of the home run that sells. With the bases loaded and a .239 hitter coming up, nobody expects much. With the bases loaded and Mike Piazza coming up, no one goes out for a beer. And the television audience is glued. The way sponsors like them.

Americans disdain the fancy-footwork approach generically. They want somebody to knock somebody down. Or out. Joe Louis, not Willie Pep. Mike Tyson, not Evander Holyfield. Blood, not points. They want the service ace, not the long rally, the dunk, not the rim shot that falls in--the in-your-face stuff.

And they want the home nine to win 17-5, not 3-2 in 10 innings.

They’re getting their wish this year. The shelling is like the battle of Verdun, take-no-prisoners. For instance:

--The most home runs hit in a season in the American League is 240 by the 1961 Yankees (when Roger Maris hit 61 and Mickey Mantle 54), and in the National League, 221, by the 1947 Giants. But, as of May 30, the Seattle Mariners, of all people, had already hit 90 this year.

--The total home runs hit in the 1908 season by the Chicago White Sox was three.

There are as many reasons advanced for the proliferation of home runs today as there are experts to advance them. The reasons are (choose one):

a) The decline of baseball as the sport of choice for young pitchers--a study recently showed that if a young boy picks up a ball to play with nowadays, 2-to-1 it will be a basketball (14 million versus 8 million in the study).

b) The shrinking ballpark dimensions and the addition of a franchise in Denver’s mile-high atmosphere.

c) The reluctance of the pitcher today to move hitters off the plate with the ear-high fastball, a traditional part of the pitcher’s arsenal that has come to be frowned upon as politically incorrect.

d) The whiplike, lightweight, thin-grip bats that mean the home run is no longer merely the provenance of the big, strong, thick-wristed studs of the game.

Whatever the reasons, the chances are looming that the 60-homer barrier, broken only twice in the 93 years of the grand old game, will be broken en masse this year.

They put an asterisk after Maris’ record 61 in 1961. But asterisks are un-American. So is the four-hit shutout. The battle cry of the ‘90s is “Outta the lot, Albert! He ain’t got nuthin!” From the same guy who yells “Kill ‘im!” at a prizefight. The guy baseball wants to bring back to the ballpark with a game that’s become a combination of batting practice and a home run derby.