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 Baseball's Big Bats Stir Up a Tasty Seasoning
Washington Post Columnist Tuesday, August 4, 1998; Page D1 This is not the season of the home run in baseball. It is, rather, the season of Mark McGwire. And, before it's over, perhaps Ken Griffey Jr., Sammy Sosa or some as yet unidentified hero as well. There's a huge difference between those two propositions. However, it's a distinction that is being missed throughout the sport. This is not a summer of goofy gopher balls and cheap dingers. It is, rather, a chance for us to watch a totally legitimate assault on baseball's most glamorous home run records by a trio of astonishing players. Big Mac, Junior and Sammy are attempting to go where Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Aaron and 70 years' worth of great sluggers have tried to venture before them – beyond 60 homers. And they're trying to do it under conditions that are virtually identical – and no easier – than those faced by Hammerin' Hank, the Mick, the Splendid Splinter, Mr. XX and the Say Hey Kid. Wherever you go in baseball this summer, the clubhouse TV is always turned on after the game. As players munch cold cuts, take showers, give interviews and get ready to go home, they cut their eyes toward the screen periodically. Like everybody else, they are on full-scale alert. Who's gone deep? Has McGwire crunched a ball in the upper deck? Has Griffey gone yard? Has Sosa smashed one? "It's not just one person who's going to break Roger Maris's home run record this season," Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Mussina said recently. "It's going to be a couple of people. And they're going to fly past it." That's close to the common wisdom in the game. The Maris record is as good as dead. It's a fait accompli , a forgone conclusion – a kind of Let's Revitalize Baseball conspiracy that is simply being played out. Supposedly, the deck is so stacked in favor of McGwire, Griffey and Sosa that it'll be a shock if 61 does not fall. What's to keep Mac from 70? Yes, fly past that record. In fact, this entire line of thinking – prevalent from the dugout to the cover of Time – is absolutely untrue. We've fallen, myself included, for the unexamined assumption that this era is a unique home run hitter's paradise. After the Maris record was broken, wouldn't it almost be necessary to point out that the new mark was just a tad . . . well . . . tainted. Home runs are easier to hit, and runs are easier to score, than they've ever been, right? The ball is juiced. The new ballparks are small. The strike zone is tiny. Expansion has diluted pitching. Creatine has helped sluggers increase muscle mass, supposedly without the dangers of steroids. And everybody wants the record broken. This time, let's let the facts get in the way of a good story. Because, if we do, suddenly we've got an even better tale. If McGwire breaks Maris's record, he will have done it in a league, and in a time, when both home runs and runs were being produced at exactly the same rates that they were in the National League from 1953 through 1961. In each of those nine seasons, the NL averaged between 1.81 and 2.05 home runs per game. That's high. But not abnormal. In the past three years, the NL homer average has been 1.90, 1.96, 1.91 and, this season, 1.90. (Runs in the 1950s in the NL were also right where they are now – fluctuating around 9.25 per game.) That's right. Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Frank Robinson, Duke Snider, Eddie Mathews, Ernie Banks and Ted Kluszewski had their big power years in an era when stats were identical to the way they've been in the National League for the last four years. Yet, in that entire nine-season period, only one player hit 50 homers – Mays with 51 in '55. So, don't compare McGwire as a slugger with those guys. In the last three years, as he's hit 52, 58 and, so far, 45 homers, McGwire's already proven that – prime vs. prime – they're just not in his league. Hard as it may be to accept, Griffey is in the same boat as McGwire. Last year the Seattle Mariners center fielder hit 56 homers. Now, he's on a pace for 60. Yet homers have been no easier to hit in the AL in the past couple of years than they were in the heyday of Maris, Mantle and Harmon Killebrew from 1961 through 1964. Back then, the AL averaged 1.84 to 1.92 homers a game each year. That, however, was before the designated hitter. Gotta factor that in, too. If there had been a DH, homers would have increased by about one-ninth. Guess where we are these days? That's right – 2.19 homers a game last year and 2.20 this season. Just like the early '60s. Is this a great time to have muscles? Absolutely. But have there been other comparable times? And even better times for homers? Yes. The two easiest seasons ever for homers were '87 and '96 in the AL (2.32 and 2.42). This summer, we're 10 percent below that level. This is the bare boiled down fact. Every great slugger of the last 50 years has had at least one period in his career when he played in the right time and place to have a shot at a new homer mark. Only Maris did it. Now, Mac's on pace for 66. Let's not sell him short. While we're at it, let's get some of our legendary old-timers down off their pedestals. For example, the impression is afoot that scoring has been astronomical since the strike of '94. While offensive levels have been high and healthy, they haven't been fluky. Ruth's American League from 1920 to 1930 produced slightly more runs per game than the AL has in the last four years. Here's my favorite Perspective On The Babe stat. In 1921, Ruth had the second-highest slugging percentage in history (.846, after setting the record of .847 in 1920). How hard was it to hit in 1921? The Indians had five guys on their bench named Burns, Stephenson, Wood, Evans and Nunamaker. In 928 at-bats, these scrubs hit a hair over .350. The Babe hit .378. So what? Obviously, it wasn't too hard to put the bat on the new lively ball in 1921. Actually, major league scoring from 1921 through 1941 was basically very close to where it is in the late '90s – about 9.5 runs a game. Of all the offense-crazed periods, the '30s was the nuttiest. Joe DiMaggio, Foxx and the like had the table set for them to feast. So, let's not hear any denigration of this season's record chasers. To be fair, we probably ought to deify them just a bit, especially McGwire and Griffey. Just think, Aaron never had more than 47 homers. Killebrew and Frank Robinson never got beyond 49. (Roberto Clemente and Al Kaline never got to 30!) Yet, at the age of 28, Griffey already has seasons of 45, 49, 56 and, in the strike-shortened year, was on pace for 58 homers. This year, 60? Compare him to Mays? Heck, compare him to anybody . Don't forget, however, that McGwire is the real beauty of this slugging bunch. If he actually did hit 70 homers this year, that would mean he'd averaged 60 homers for the past three seasons. And he's doing it in a period when it's no easier to hit the ball out of the ballpark than it was in the National League in the '50s or the American League for much of the '60s or in several other assorted seasons along the way since Ruth's day. What our turn-of-the-century heroes are trying to accomplish is every bit as authentic as it is unique. Let's not cheat ourselves by short-shrifting them.
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company |
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