Dead-ball Era - The End of The Dead-ball Era

The End of The Dead-ball Era

The dead-ball era ended suddenly. By 1921, offenses were scoring 40% more runs and hitting four times as many home runs as they had in 1918. The abruptness of this dramatic change has caused widespread debate among baseball historians, and there is no consensus among them regarding the cause of this transformation. Six popular theories have been advanced:

• Changes in the ball: This theory claims that owners replaced the ball with a newer, livelier ball (sometimes referred to as the "jackrabbit" ball), presumably with the intention of boosting offense and, by extension, ticket sales. This theory has been denied by Major League Baseball. The yarn used to wrap the core of the ball was changed prior to the 1920 season, although testing by the United States Bureau of Standards found no difference in the physical properties of the two different types of balls.
• Outlawing of the spitball: The spitball, a very effective pitch throughout the dead-ball era, was outlawed at this time as well. This theory states that without the spitball in the pitcher's arsenal, batters gained an advantage. When the pitch was outlawed in 1920, MLB did recognise that some professional pitchers had nearly built their careers on using the spitball. The league made an exception for 17 named players, who were permitted to throw spitballs for the rest of their careers. Burleigh Grimes threw the last legal spitball in 1934.
• More baseballs per game: The fatal beaning of Ray Chapman during the 1920 season led to a rule that the baseball must be replaced every time that it got dirty. With a clean ball in play at all times, players no longer had to contend with a ball that "traveled through the air erratically, tended to soften in the later innings, and as it came over the plate, was very hard to see."
• Game-winning home runs: In 1920, Major League Baseball adopted writer Fred Lieb's proposal that a game-winning home run with men on base be counted as a home run even if its run is not needed to win the game. Owners attempted (but failed) to eliminate the intentional walk (succeeding only in changing the rules to mandate that the catcher be within the catcher's box when a pitch is delivered)‚ and it was decided that everything that happened in a protested game would be added to the game record. (From 1910 to 1919‚ records in protested games were excluded.)
• Babe Ruth: This theory alleges that the prolific success of Babe Ruth hitting home runs led players around the league to forsake their old methods of hitting (described above) and adopt a "free-swinging" strategy designed to hit the ball hard and with an uppercut stroke, with the intention of hitting more home runs. Critics of this theory claim that it does not account for the improvement in batting averages from 1918–1921, over which time the league average improved from .254 to .291.
• Ballpark dimensions: This theory contends that the cause of the offensive outburst was changes in the dimensions of the ballparks of the time. Accurate estimates of ballpark sizes of the era can be difficult to obtain, however, so there is some disagreement over whether the dimensions changed at all during this time, let alone whether the change led to an increase in offense. A related fact here is that a rule change enacted for the 1920 season for the first time ruled balls that were hit over the fence in fair territory but ended up foul before landing to be ruled fair, and home runs, rather than foul balls. This rule change greatly pleased hitters for both New York City teams, who had had many "hooking" home runs called foul in the Polo Grounds.