Sport: Baseball’s Declining Art

There hasn’t been a .400 hitter in baseball since 1941. And there aren’t even many .300 hitters any more—only ten last year (five in each league), compared with 28 in 1950. How come? Last week in SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, the St. Louis Cardinals’ Stan Musial, 40, who owns a .335 lifetime average and is getting ready to start his 21st season, put down some of the reasons:

¶ “The shape of the bat has changed because everyone swings for the fences. Used to be bats had thick handles and a big barrel. Then they found out it’s not the size of the bat that gets home runs—it’s the speed with which you swing it. So now everyone uses a bat with a thin handle and a long taper, so that most of the wood’s in the end. You can whip this one around and get power in your swing.”

¶ “Every pitcher you face has the slider and uses it pretty well. When I came up to the majors, very few pitchers had it. It fits the shape of this bat. It comes in like a fast ball and breaks a few inches in toward the hands of the batter. That means it breaks in where there is no wood in the bat. Just the thin handle. It breaks so late you can’t adjust your swing for it. Used to be all you had to worry about was the fast ball, the curve and the change-up. Add the slider and right there the batter’s problem is 25% harder.”

¶ “A pitcher used to go a complete game. So the pitchers paced themselves. They’d ease up now and then if there was no one on base, and you might get a fat pitch. In the late innings, too, they would get tired and you could get hits off them. It’s not like that now. Now the managers send a pitcher in to throw as hard as he can as long as he can. If he gets tired they send in a relief pitcher who throws as hard for as long as he can. Now. in the late innings the pitchers are fresh and the batters are tired.”

¶ “Night baseball cuts a lot of points off the average. They can’t light up the skies or the trees or buildings in the background. You lose your sense of depth perception. Everything’s working against the hitter now. Even the gloves. They’re bigger and better made. Fielders make plays every day you wouldn’t see once in a season a few years back.”

Stan Musial went out of his way to insist that the decline in batting averages is not due to a decline in the skill of the players, the old shibboleth of many sportswriters. “In the ’40s. when I came up, I played against the great players of the ’30s. and I heard them talk about the great ones of the ’20s. Now it’s the ’60s, and some of the kids I’m playing with and against will be the superstars of the ’70s. You get a long perspective, and the players are just as good now as they were then. The difference is in the game.”