Baseball's Lively Ball Era

Question: What's this "lively ball era" people talk about?

An oft-told baseball story is that sometime around 1920, major league executives acted in concert with baseball manufacturers to "liven up" the ball. Their supposed aim was to increase flagging attendance in the wake of the Black Sox scandal. With this new ball, Babe ruth slammed 54 then 59 home runs, shattering the major league record, and for the rest of the decade, batters went wild and, more importantly, attendance soared.

It's almost impossible to find a baseball history book that does not tell this story as if it were undisputed truth. There's only one thing wrong: It's just not true!

No writer who espouses this theory has any evidence to prove it. That's because the ball used from 1920 to 1926 was not in any substantial way different from that used from 1911from 1919. The Reach Company, which manufactured balls for both leagues (although Spalding put its name on the NL's balls), did use a higher-quality yarn after World War I, but it had little, if anything, to do with the inflated averages; and even if it did have an effect, it was not done intentionally to fatten batting averages and boost attendance.

This "rabbit ball" gets blamed simply based on the fact that offensive totals increased. But that's like accusing somebody of murder when the only evidence you have is the dead body.

Actually, three important factors were responsible for the outrageous hitting totals of what became known as the "lively ball era": the banning of the spitball; the death of Ray Chapman on August 16, 1920; and the coming of Babe Ruth.

The outlawing of the spitball came before the 1919 season because there was a fear that a pitcher might lose control of the ball and kill someone. Well, someone did die the following season, but it wasn't because of the spitball. Chapman's death from an underhand fastball by Carl Mays inspired major league executives to order that umpires keep fresh white balls in play at all times; prior to that, the same one or two balls were used throughout the game, and by the later innings, that ball would get spit on and covered with dirt and mud.

Ruth, who had already broken the home run record before Chapman's death, helped usher in the new era by showing the baseball world that home runs were possible. Before he became a full-time hitter, baseball games were won with "scientific" spray hitting and stolen bases. Ruth and his uppercut swing became so popular that legions of baseball players started copying him. Add to that the small size of most ballparks, and of course you're going to have an increase in home runs.

What proof is there that no lively ball was introduced? A lot more than the proof that a lively ball was introduced. Throughout the 1920s, journalists and league offices launched any number of investigations into the alleged "rabbit ball" theories, and all of them came to the same conclusion: that the balls used after 1920 had the same weight and size and bounce and used the same materials (except for the yarn, which didn't make much of a difference) as the ball that had been used in the past decade.

In addition, the manufacturer and league officials gave sworn depositions to that effect. Much-respected NL president John Heydler said, "At no time have the club owners ordered the manufacturer to make the ball livelier. The only stipulation the club owners have made about the ball is that it be the very best that could be made."

The Reach Baseball Guide ran a full-page ad announcing, "We never experiment with our patrons. There has been no change in the construction of the CORK CENTER BALL since we introduced it in 1910." And the United States Bureau of Standards conducted extensive tests that came to the same conclusion.

So what we have is an easy-to-understand effect---the inflated batting numbers--with a very complex series of causes. In such instances of uncertainty, many people find it reassuring to believe that somebody, somewhere, no matter how manipulative and secretive, is in control of things. Certainly, batting totals zoomed out of sight, and at just about any other time in the game's history, such an explosion probably would have been met with some kind of official attempt to get control of things. Instead, what the league found was that fans loved it. Attendance per game increased by 21% in both leagues in 1920, and though it fluctuated for the next decade, the owners let their bottom lines do their talking, and the home run was there to stay.

In 1926, Reach introduced the "cushioned cork center" to replace the plain old "cork center," but that change actually hurt the batters: league batting, on-base, and slugging averages went down in 1926. By 1930, however, an entire generation of players had honed the art of power hitting using thin-handled bats, and batting totals reached their peak.

The de facto end of the lively ball era was the beginning of World War II. Throughout the 1930s, batting and slugging averages were still high, but after the war, they seemed to go down to more "normal" levels. There's really no easy explanation for that change except to note that it was gradual and probably due to evolutionary forces rather than Babe Ruth's revolutionary force. (An excellent study of 1920s baseball, from which much of my information comes, is William Curran's Big Sticks.)

Today, we're in the midst of a new lively ball era. As recently as 1992, a player could lead the league in home runs, as Fred McGriff did, with 35. Now, with McGwire, Bonds, and Sosa each besting 60 with ease, 35 home runs doesn't even get you to the All-Star game. Journalists and baseball officials are wringing their hands and wondering what to do to get offense down to normal levels; some are suggesting we should raise the pitcher's mound, or deaden the baseball, or something. I think if we just wait it out and patiently endure another couple of seasons of 11-9 ballgames, we'll see offensive totals drop. It will happen gradually, and we don't need to enact any new rules to reach equilibrium.

Copyright 2008 David H. Martinez. All rights reserved.