Was there ever a reason given for why baseball never standardized the playing fields and stadiums? I know very little about the sport, but it always seemed odd to me that they were so blasé about the space they played in considering how many rules it affected and how specific things like pitchers' mound heights and base line lengths are.
Some of the quirks of ballparks are charming. The stadiums built in the mid-60s and 1970s were more standard, but ugly and boring. There probably should be some minimum/maximum sorts of guidance in ballpark design, but nothing too strict. The biggest ballpark effect now comes from the thin air in Denver. I just don't see a way to play baseball there.
That last section was a sad reminder that with 12 teams now making the playoffs, pennant races are essentially dead. But I guess after only 162 games, it's still not clear which teams belong in the post season and which don't.
I was a Bob Gibson fan as a kid (1990s) not because I knew much about him but just because I loved his name. Later on came to realize how good he really was. Thanks for the article.
There was one AL park change '68 that probably had an effect although I haven't checked the numbers: A's from KC to Oakland. The Oakland park was far more pitcher friendly. Catfish Hunter pitched a perfect game in '68.
Reading this is a nice reminder of how much baseball knowledge has advanced since the late 90s, when I was a pre-teen and at the height of my fandom. Back then, baseball books lamented that no one had hit .400 since Ted Williams's 1941 season, but skirted around the obvious explanation (that racial integration improved the quality of play all around, including pitching and defense). We didn't have terms like 'exit velocity' and 'quality start,' both of which I learned from this post -- thank you for that -- and I don't recall any sustained discussion of park changes.
I also recall that the sudden rise in HRs in the late 90s was another big mystery, no mention of PEDs of course.
Concerning HRs, I am convinced, based solely on my own memory and not on any study or data, that the ball became bouncier. As I recall, when you used to drop a baseball from a height of 4 feet onto concrete, it came back up less than 6 inches. But in recent decades, the ball would seem to rebound more than a foot. Also, pitchers' hands have gotten larger, so they have a tighter grip on the ball. That is why the change that I want to see is a slightly larger ball with less resilience. It would be more difficult to pitch, easier to hit, and harder to hit out of the park. My goal is more balls in play, with fewer strikeouts and home runs.
My theory is that drugs got a lot better in the mid-90s due to some technological changes that still aren't public knowledge, but this is totally speculative; it seems that the definitive history of steroids has not been written yet.
(Women's T&F records are a whole different story where a lot of the relevant info is probably buried in some Soviet/East German/Chinese archives, or else has long since been destroyed).
Was there ever a reason given for why baseball never standardized the playing fields and stadiums? I know very little about the sport, but it always seemed odd to me that they were so blasé about the space they played in considering how many rules it affected and how specific things like pitchers' mound heights and base line lengths are.
Some of the quirks of ballparks are charming. The stadiums built in the mid-60s and 1970s were more standard, but ugly and boring. There probably should be some minimum/maximum sorts of guidance in ballpark design, but nothing too strict. The biggest ballpark effect now comes from the thin air in Denver. I just don't see a way to play baseball there.
That last section was a sad reminder that with 12 teams now making the playoffs, pennant races are essentially dead. But I guess after only 162 games, it's still not clear which teams belong in the post season and which don't.
I was a Bob Gibson fan as a kid (1990s) not because I knew much about him but just because I loved his name. Later on came to realize how good he really was. Thanks for the article.
I love this essay. Thank you for sharing it. And thank goodness baseball is coming back soon.
There was one AL park change '68 that probably had an effect although I haven't checked the numbers: A's from KC to Oakland. The Oakland park was far more pitcher friendly. Catfish Hunter pitched a perfect game in '68.
Reading this is a nice reminder of how much baseball knowledge has advanced since the late 90s, when I was a pre-teen and at the height of my fandom. Back then, baseball books lamented that no one had hit .400 since Ted Williams's 1941 season, but skirted around the obvious explanation (that racial integration improved the quality of play all around, including pitching and defense). We didn't have terms like 'exit velocity' and 'quality start,' both of which I learned from this post -- thank you for that -- and I don't recall any sustained discussion of park changes.
I also recall that the sudden rise in HRs in the late 90s was another big mystery, no mention of PEDs of course.
Concerning HRs, I am convinced, based solely on my own memory and not on any study or data, that the ball became bouncier. As I recall, when you used to drop a baseball from a height of 4 feet onto concrete, it came back up less than 6 inches. But in recent decades, the ball would seem to rebound more than a foot. Also, pitchers' hands have gotten larger, so they have a tighter grip on the ball. That is why the change that I want to see is a slightly larger ball with less resilience. It would be more difficult to pitch, easier to hit, and harder to hit out of the park. My goal is more balls in play, with fewer strikeouts and home runs.
That makes sense, but the late 1990s/early 2000s also saw commensurate gains in men's track and field records -- the 1500, 3K, 5K and 10K records were all set within like 5 years of each other, and only recently have the latter two been broken with the advent of new shoes (https://www.seattletimes.com/business/nikes-super-shoes-spark-race-with-brooks-running-and-others-to-outfit-the-worlds-elite-runners/) and 'wavelight technology' (https://worldathletics.org/news/feature/wavelight-technology-athletics) -- and it's easiest to explain the two of these changes *in tandem* with reference to advances in PEDs.
My theory is that drugs got a lot better in the mid-90s due to some technological changes that still aren't public knowledge, but this is totally speculative; it seems that the definitive history of steroids has not been written yet.
(Women's T&F records are a whole different story where a lot of the relevant info is probably buried in some Soviet/East German/Chinese archives, or else has long since been destroyed).