Why was Dead Ball dead?

[CatKnight]

I've always been curious:

As you know the early 20th century, say 1901-1920ish, is called the Dead Ball era. Decent number of hits. LOTS of errors. Very few home runs.

The error (and therefore hit) part I somewhat understand - small gloves, more balls going into play and so forth.

I'm curious about the homers though: Why so few? I assume men weren't substantially weaker back then. Certainly nowadays power hitters have more resources to help them build up strength, but that alone doesn't seem to explain it. Babe Ruth, for example, didn't have a modern training regimen to work with (let alone steroids.)

So what happened? Were the balls different? Did the rules give pitchers an unusual advantage?

[Astros33Resurrected]

Pitchers had a few advantages. I know some had higher mounds, were allowed to spit on the ball etc. Some people have told me that the balls were made entirely differently, but I haven't researched it. I guess I should go do that

[Astros33Resurrected]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadball_era

That might help you. Apparently, the ball was designed badly and they were overused.

[rudel.dietrich]

The ball was indeed different, to what degree is debatable.

It was wound about as tight as it was in the live ball era, but the 'problem' was that they tended to use only 2-3 baseballs per game.
Sometimes even less.
Thus it would get scuffed and the seams would begin to loosen.
And the lower quality products they used tended to make the ball go from round to all sorts of oval and potato shapes.
And it would collect dirt and tobaco juice and god knows what else.
After just a few innings the ball was no longer white and thus alot harder to see.
So in effect you had a much softer ball that was alot harder to see.

Most people will tell you that is the bulk of the reason.

IMO however I think it had to do with mentality.
People didnt try and hit homeruns. The culture and the way the game was played was to swing at everything and just try and make contact.
Players used 40 oz bats with their hands 1/3 of the way up the barrel and the bat thickness was the same the entire length of the bat.
They slashed and punched at the ball. Walks and strikeout were alot fewer since players swung at everything and tried to put the ball in play.
The power hitters of the day were line drive hitters who had the hands and wrist strength to drive the ball.

Babe Ruth if you read alot about him had a personality that was pretty much he never did what was expected or what he was told.
He liked to uppcut the ball and thus produce fly balls.
he also held the bat lower on the barrel and whipped it through the strikezone for more batspeed.
Thus alot of strikeouts and alot of HRs and alot of flyball outs.

Couple that with a player dying from being struck in the head with a pitch late in a game because more than likely the ball was so dark coloured from dirt he could not see it.
Overnight almost baseball began to use dozens of balls a game and the materials became better and the seams tighter.
And everyone saw what Ruth was doing and began to copy his uppercut swing.
All those things together came together to change the run scoring enviroment.

In the 20s and even into the 30s several teams tried to adhere to the deadball playing style but usualy wound up near the bottom of the league in the standings.
People began to realize that the HR was just a better way to play the game if you were trying to win.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

The ball was indeed different, to what degree is debatable.

It was wound about as tight as it was in the live ball era, but the 'problem' was that they tended to use only 2-3 baseballs per game.
Sometimes even less.
Thus it would get scuffed and the seams would begin to loosen.
And the lower quality products they used tended to make the ball go from round to all sorts of oval and potato shapes.
And it would collect dirt and tobaco juice and god knows what else.
After just a few innings the ball was no longer white and thus alot harder to see.
So in effect you had a much softer ball that was alot harder to see.

Most people will tell you that is the bulk of the reason.

IMO however I think it had to do with mentality.
People didnt try and hit homeruns. The culture and the way the game was played was to swing at everything and just try and make contact.
Players used 40 oz bats with their hands 1/3 of the way up the barrel and the bat thickness was the same the entire length of the bat.
They slashed and punched at the ball. Walks and strikeout were alot fewer since players swung at everything and tried to put the ball in play.
The power hitters of the day were line drive hitters who had the hands and wrist strength to drive the ball.

Babe Ruth if you read alot about him had a personality that was pretty much he never did what was expected or what he was told.
He liked to uppcut the ball and thus produce fly balls.
he also held the bat lower on the barrel and whipped it through the strikezone for more batspeed.
Thus alot of strikeouts and alot of HRs and alot of flyball outs.

Couple that with a player dying from being struck in the head with a pitch late in a game because more than likely the ball was so dark coloured from dirt he could not see it.
Overnight almost baseball began to use dozens of balls a game and the materials became better and the seams tighter.
And everyone saw what Ruth was doing and began to copy his uppercut swing.
All those things together came together to change the run scoring enviroment.

In the 20s and even into the 30s several teams tried to adhere to the deadball playing style but usualy wound up near the bottom of the league in the standings.
People began to realize that the HR was just a better way to play the game if you were trying to win.

That pretty much nails it. There were some other minor things like ballparks (many with fences nearly 100 feet farther away than any modern park), and conditioning/weight lifting really was in an embryonic state.

But the ball was a huge factor. Until Ray Chapman was killed by Carl Mays it was the job of the infielders to chew tobacco and black licorice and spit it into their gloves. By the 3rd or 4th inning the ball was this nasty dark-colored thing, soggy, and often misshapen. Many people thought Chapman couldn't get out of the way of the pitch that killed him because he couldn't see it, so after his death they changed the rules so that whenever the ball didn't look new it was thrown out. And they banned "freak" deliveries like the spitball.

Ruth really did lead a revolution by not listening to what anyone told him. We all see how traditions in baseball become orthodoxy - managers won't use their closer in the 8th, for decades fast guys with .290 OBPs lead off, complete games were signs of manliness for 100 years. Home runs were just like that in the 1900s and 1910s - everyone "knew" that swinging for the fences just lead to a lot of fly outs, and the way to score was line drives, aggressive baserunning, and sacrificing yourself for the good of the team. It took the combination of two scandals (Chapman and the Black Sox) and Ruth's super-sized personality to change the game.

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by Fallschirmjager

Babe Ruth held the bat lower on the barrel and whipped it through the strikezone for more batspeed. Thus alot of strikeouts and alot of HRs and alot of flyball outs.

Babe Ruth's season high in K's was 93. Hard to strike out a great deal and maintain a career .342 BA.

[CBL-Commish]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

Babe Ruth's season high in K's was 93. Hard to strike out a great deal and maintain a career .342 BA.

Babe Ruth's strikeouts were miles ahead of anyone else of his era. His whiffs were almost on par with his homers in shattering the record book.

Strikeout leaders through 1935:

STRIKEOUTS                      SO     
1    Babe Ruth                  1330   
2    Jimmy Dykes                 798   
3    Rabbit Maranville           756   
4    Cy Williams                 721   
5    Hack Wilson                 713   
6    Tom Brown                   708   
7    Max Carey                   695   
8    George Kelly                694   
9    Tony Lazzeri                680   
10   Rogers Hornsby              674

[darkhorse]

Originally Posted by CBL-Commish

Babe Ruth's strikeouts were miles ahead of anyone else of his era.

No doubt, if Babe played today that his BA would drop quite a bit and his K total would probably double. I'm pretty convinced that he would still be one of the elite players in the game.

[rudel.dietrich]

I also want to add that it was no impossible to hit HRs in this era.
Ty Cobb in batting practice would frequently crush balls to all parts of the field.
There are also records of him hitting 3-4 HRs a game with regularity when playing college teams or semi pro teams.
In those games major leaguers were more trying to put on a show so they did things like uppercut swings to try and make the fans happy.


Babe Ruth being only a part time batter never really cared if he flied out with a runner on first.
But it just so happened he would produce alot more extra base hits and told his manager to go to hell when he told him it was his job to move the runner over instead of possibly making an out.

[RonCo]

Originally Posted by darkhorse

Babe Ruth's season high in K's was 93. Hard to strike out a great deal and maintain a career .342 BA.

Not quite career averages...but here's a list of guys from 1960-2004 with:

AB > 400
Avg > .340
SO > 90

year	Last	First	AB	AVG	SO
2000	Ramirez	Manny	439	.351	117
1999	Jeter	Derek	627	.349	116
1996	Burks	Ellis	613	.344	114
1996	Rodrig.	Alex	601	.358	104
2000	Delgado	Carlos	569	.344	104
1967	Clemen.	Roberto	585	.357	103
2001	Walker	Larry	497	.350	103
1995	Bichet.	Dante	579	.340	96
1999	Willia.	Bernie	591	.342	95
2004	Mora	Melvin	550	.340	95
1997	Walker	Larry	568	.366	90

[RonCo]

drop the BA requirement to .330 and you get 31 names. Note, almost all are after 1990.

[magnet]

Originally Posted by RonCo

drop the BA requirement to .330 and you get 31 names. Note, almost all are after 1990.

I bet the Big Hurt is on that list.