Columnist Dean Juipe: Don’t fight it — baseball has changed

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 | 9:31 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Despite paying the man no outward attention, he was impossible to ignore.

"Look at that," he exclaimed from his position at the bar, and the tone of his voice required everyone within earshot to do as he was doing and gaze toward a nearby television set. "That was nothing more than a pop fly and it went over the fence.

"This is getting ridiculous."

He wasn't through and neither were the teams involved in the televised slugfest. Before the night was over there would be four-run innings, five-run innings and seven-run innings, all of which exasperated the intolerant viewer.

The major league baseball game he was watching, Houston at Los Angeles, was one of many already this season in which the multitude of runs would have been easier to count with an abacus. Scoring, in case you haven't noticed, is up and the home run count is numbing.

The trend, if that's what it is, is by design yet hardly anyone with an opinion to express and an outlet for its expression is too happy about it. Whether it's an old fan crying in his beer at the neighborhood bar or a columnist with an ax to grind, the home run frenzy has many, many dissenters.

Their complaints are specific: the ball is juiced; the strike zone is too small; the pitching too inferior. The result is that home runs are up from a record 2.3 per game in 1999 to 2.6 today, and that a team that hit only 58 home runs in all of 1986 -- the St. Louis Cardinals -- hit a record 55 alone in the month of April this season.

Runs per game are up from last season's 10.2 to 10.7, and, to many fans' dismay, the game has changed.

But, guess what? It's time to put personal preference aside and get used to the modern game as it is.

Having written 20 years ago and then again 10 years ago that baseball was mistaken in accenting offense and turning the sport into a four-cornered relay race, the time has come for a reality check. And that reality is this: Not only is the dead-ball era long gone, so is the 2-1 game.

Critics are arguing that baseball has trashed its past with all these offensive fireworks, which, supposedly, appeal to a younger generation. The stated fear is that once-treasured statistical milestones will not only be erased, their significance will be completely lost on future fans.

But that horse has already left the barn. Whether the typical baseball game is 1-0 or 20-15, as time passes fewer and fewer people will realize Frank "Home Run" Baker earned his reputation by leading the American League in homers four consecutive years (1911-14) even though he never hit more than 12 in a given year.

If the 60-homer season becomes commonplace -- and it looks as if it might -- fans have two options: welcome it, however reluctantly, or cut their ties to the sport.

It's easier to welcome it.

Baseball has no desire to turn back the clock. It is studying, via the University of Massachusetts, the density of the balls in use this season and it may weigh the merits of raising the pitching mound or expanding the strike zone, but it is content with the product as we're currently seeing it.

Save the theatrics. It may not be the style of baseball you or your father grew up enjoying, but it's what's in fashion and it's here to stay.