Home-run Issues

THERE were too many home-runs last summer—so many, in fact, that the popularity of baseball is said to be facing something like a crisis.

As a result, the best minds and magnates of the Major Leagues will spend much of this winter, reports a sports writer, Irving E. Sanborn, devising ways and means for "the rescue of the home-run from the ranks of the commonplace, and its restoration to its distinguished position in the esteem of baseball fans." The average fan, says Mr. Sanborn, may be more forcibly imprest with the necessity for breaking the New York monopoly of major pennants and World's Series, or the resumption of the privilege of drafting recruits from the high-grade minor leagues. These reforms may be important enough, admits Mr. Sanborn, but they are not so important as "to stop the cheapening of the home-run, which has been in progress for several seasons." The average fan. he predicts, is going to lose one of his main reasons for being interested in baseball unless this is done, and when the average fan does that, as everybody knows, it is time for the best minds and magnates to get busy. Mr. Sanborn reports, in Baseball (New York):

There was a total of 976 home-runs registered in the American and National Leagues in 1923, as against 1,054 in the two major circuits in 1922. National League batsmen contributed 536 toward the 1923 total, and American League sluggers made 442. These figures are taken from the unofficial averages, but their only difference from the official will be due to possible clerical errors, because there is seldom any argument about a home-run. The umpire decides 99 1/2 per cent. of them—not the official scorer.

That slight decrease in four-base hits will not restore the feature to its former exalted position for a good many years yet unless some method is found by the rule-making members of the magnate oligarchy to bring about quality instead of quantity production in the home-run department. The Philadelphia Nationals, as usual, led the majors in four-baggers this year. The total number of drives which floated out or bounded out of the cigar-box in which the Phillies play their home games was 110. Ten or fifteen years ago that would have been a respectable total for the whole eight teams in either big league.

During the past season 18 home-runs were made in one minor league ball park in one afternoon when a double header was played. That happened in the bushes, of course, and probably the fences were shorter than in the bigger circuits. But it makes a joke out of what ought to be one of the most inspiring features of baseball to have it happen eighteen times in one day even on a bush-league field. And the men who frame the rules for big-league games make laws which govern all contests wherever baseball is played. There is no more tempting appeal to an epicurean appetite than quail done to a turn and served hot. But history does not record the fact that any one has yet been able to inhale thirty quail in thirty days without nausea.

The remedy? It is not the purpose of this article to advance any specific process by which the home-run might be rejuvenated. Its sole object is to establish the necessity of doing something.

There are two very effective ways, announces this critic, to reduce the output of home-runs:

One of them is to enlarge the ball parks to a uniform size, which is, of course, impractical considering the price of real estate and the difficulty of moving stands of reinforced concrete. The other is to increase the difficulty of making home-runs outside of the arena. There probably are plenty of other remedies, but it is up to the rule-makers to devise or select the best one.

At present there are vast inequalities in the requirements for circuit drives in the different cities. At least fifteen varieties of home-runs are possible in the majors alone, and it would be sixteen varieties if the two St. Louis teams did not play on the same grounds at home. It has not been possible, naturally, to obtain uniform lots for ball parks, nor to construct stands and bleachers of anything like the same dimensions. Consequently the playing-fields are of all shapes and sizes. Some have short right-fields, others short left-fields, and still others have short foul-lines in both right and left fields. Some have high screens above short boundaries, others have none. Some have wire-netting in front of the bleachers, others do not.

To illustrate the point, comparison may be made of two major-league parks of widely different home-run possibilities. The Philadelphia National-League Club's arena is the smallest in area in either major circuit and the easiest one on which to make home-runs. Right-field is so short that often it is impossible to make two bases on a drive against the wall if the outfielder is experienced in playing the rebounds. It is surmounted by a very high screen, but many a tall fly drops safely outside, altho it would have been caught by an ordinary outfielder on other parks in the circuit. It is no herculean feat to swat the ball entirely out of the lot over the left-field wall and there are bleachers in front of it. Even in the deepest part of center-field drives have been made to the club-house and there are bleachers in front of that.

As contrast Comiskey Park in Chicago is close to the ideal. Right and left-field bleachers are exactly the same distance from home-plate on the foul-lines and it requires a lusty wallop to drive the ball over the high wire screen in front of them. Occasionally a brilliant right or left-fielder can go back to the bleacher barrier and catch a long fly ball, but only when he was playing deep-field at the start. Any-thing that strikes the ground inside the enclosure stays inside instead of bounding into the stands and is good for three bases for a fleet runner. In center-field it is possible for a fairly fast man to make a home-run inside the grounds. It takes a slugger of the Ruth type to hit anything except a foul fly entirely out of the lot which is an exact square. It cost Owner Comiskey a tidy sum to induce a wrecking concern to vacate a lease on the ground now occupied by the right-field bleachers, but the Old Roman paid it to get rid of a short right-field fence and to obtain space for a symmetrical playing-field.

Ruth never could have made his world's record of 59 home-runs on the Braves park in Boston, or even if he had remained a member of the Red Sox, declares Mr. Sanborn. Furthermore:

It is doubtful if he could have hung up that mark, even in his best year, if the Yankee Stadium had been in existence then, so that he would have been playing there instead of at the Polo Grounds. Ruth himself, commenting on the difference between the two baseball parks in Gotham, after a preliminary practise at the Giants' grounds last October, said:

"That right-field stand is a cinch compared to the Yankee Stadium. You don't know how easy it is until you've been away for a year. I'd have hit eighty homers easily here this season."

Merely increasing the legal distance from home-plate to the boundary necessary to entitle a batsman to a home-run on a drive out of bounds will not solve the problem of standardizing such hits. There still would be the inequality of conditions due to parks where ground-balls hop into unscreened stands while other club owners screen their bleachers and eliminate that element of luck.

When first opened, the Yankee Stadium had a joke home-run zone in right-field near the foul-line where an ordinary single could hurdle the barrier for a round-trip hit. But Colonel Ruppert erected a ten-foot screen in front of that pocket, making it necessary to hit the ball over it on the fly to earn a home-run. The club owners whose open stands are not screened probably would protest strenuously if a rule were passed compelling all of them to erect ten-foot screens to eliminate lucky four-baggers. They could protest both on the basis of cost and because their patrons would object to looking through a wire netting after having had an unobstructed view all these years. But it would be possible to handle those conditions by a rule which would eliminate home-runs on balls that strike inside the enclosure and bound into an unprotected stand, cutting down such hits to two or three bases according to the distance of the stands from home-plate.

Clark Griffith, the Washington club owner, sensed the danger of stultifying the home-run by surfeiting the fans with them, and advocated over a year ago a change in the rules which would have eliminated some of them. At present a batsman is entitled to a home-run on any fair hit that goes "over a fence or into a stand" at a distance not less than 235 feet from the home-plate. If any fence or stand is closer to the plate than 235 feet, an out-of-bounds hit in that section is good for only two bases. Griffith's suggestion, as I recall it, was to change that distance from 235 to 315 feet and make all fair hits over the wall or into a stand less than 315 feet from the platter good for only two bases.

That would have helped a little by eliminating some of the joke home-runs, and it would have operated to rectify some of the existing inequalities of the different ball parks. But it would not have solved the problem of equaling the chances for home-runs on balls bounding into stands, some of which are screened and some of which are not.

Griffith's suggestion had no chance for a tryout, however, as it was opposed by the National League and by Commissioner Landis for different reasons. The American League could not try it out alone because the existing agreement makes it necessary for the playing rules to be uniform, thereby preventing either league from experimenting with them on its own hook. The commissioner avowed that the baseball public loved home-runs and should not be deprived of the source of one of its greatest joys. He lacked the foresight to realize that it is possible to give any man too much of any good thing—except golf. The National League's objections, if memory is correct, were more specific and had to do with the fear of confusing the fans with too many boundary lines and of adding to the woes of the umpires by increasing the chances for kicking.

"In the bad old days," says Mr. Sanborn, "the American League would have been free to give Griffith's idea a trial and probably would have done so this year." The critic protests:

While uniformity of playing rules is a thing to be desired, it is doubtful if its value to baseball offsets its tendency to throttle initiative in the matter of improving the game. It is tedious even in imagination to think what a ball-game would have degenerated into when all the batsmen had acquired the ability to foul off good balls at will without incurring any penalty for it. And the foul-strike rule might never have been adopted, or have been tried out too late, if it had been necessary to convince both major leagues, and all the club owners thereof, theoretically that it would be a good thing for the game. The same is true of other innovations adopted before the present dual alliance between the American and National Leagues produced a stand-pat policy.

The conservative majority of the magnates of the two leagues seems satisfied to "let well enough alone" and to hesitate through fear of hurting their game to make many experiments in the line of improvement. The standpatters maintain that baseball never was more popular than to-day, and point to the record-breaking world's series of 1923 to prove it.

They overlook the fact that this nation has been growing and prospering fast and that many other branches of sport have been gaining in popularity. They do not ask themselves if baseball has increased its vogue and its patronage as much as it might have done under a progressive instead of a standpat policy.

Getting down to brass tacks, the record-breaking attendance of the world's series of 1923, altho demonstrating emphatically that no greater throngs ever saw a similar event, do not prove beyond dispute that baseball enthusiasm is any greater or more wide-spread than ten years ago. They prove that the public responded more copiously to more spacious accommodations than ever before were provided for a World's Series. They do not prove that more people would not have attended previous world combats if the plants would have held them.

As indicated by the official attendance figures this fall, the maximum capacity of the Yankee Stadium under world's series restrictions was 62,817 paid admissions and of the Polo Grounds 46,302. Three games were played in each park. If they had been filled to capacity every one of the six days, the total attendance would have been 327,357. The official total attendance for the six games was 301,430. Which means that almost 26,000 more folks could have seen the 1923 series if they had wanted to.

Ten years before that, in 1913, the World's Series was played in the Polo Grounds and at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. The official records show that the maximum capacity of the Polo Grounds at that time was 36,682 and of the Athletics' Park 20,563. Three of the five games in that series were played on the Polo Grounds and two at Shibe Park. The maximum total attendance possible under those conditions was 151,172. The actual paid attendance in 1913 totaled 150,992. Which indicates that only 180 more patrons could have been crowded into the parks during those five days.

Crowds were turned away at every one of those games between the Giants and Athletics, altho not as many as the throngs which could not get into the New York plants on the Saturday and Sunday of the 1923 World's Series. But the fans of 1913 knew by experience that very few seats were on sale to the general public in those days, while Gotham patrons this year had reason to hope there would be room for everybody who had the inclination and the price.

The point is just this. The record figures of last October do not by themselves prove that interest was any greater than in 1913, because no one can assert positively that the total attendance of the 1913 series would not have exceeded 301,430 if the Athletics and Giants had been able to use the Yankee Stadium and the enlarged Polo Grounds and their series had lasted six games. I am not claiming that baseball enthusiasm was any greater in 1913 than now. I am merely pointing out that there were not 26,000 vacant seats or standing spots in 1913 or at any subse-quent World's Series prior to the latest series.

Source: The Literary Digest for February 21, 1925