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Comment by habosa | Hacker News Reader

As many have said this is a tactical reaction to changes in pitching and defense.

It always amazes me how balanced the game of baseball is compared to other sports. It's been around for more than a century and people have become so much stronger and faster on both sides of the ball. Still, offense and defense remain so perfectly matched. The bases remain 90 feet apart and the pitcher still throws from 60 feet away. A home run is still 400 feet.

Consider basketball which has had to dramatically rebalance the rules over time. Restrictions on time in the paint, the 3 point line, perimeter defense, etc. Or how hockey changed all the rules after the lockout. Or how football has totally re worked pass defense and special teams.

Baseball is just baseball.

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Keep in mind a lot of various and regional changes happened early in baseball's history and that baseball as a professional sport is much older than football or basketball.

Ground rule doubles were briefly home runs in some leagues, foul balls once didn't count as strikes, then you could strike out on a foul ball, intentional walk changes, spitballs outlawed, balk rules ...

Baseball was probably just as fluid in its first thirty-forty years as basketball, it was just a long time ago.

Edit: Another big one was the pitching changes in the 1960s after a wave of pitching dominance: http://www.baseball-reference.com/bullpen/History_of_basebal...

Baseball, like any other sport, has gone under many revisions to its rules throughout its history. The only statement you say has never changed that I can tell is the bases have been 90 feet apart since 1840. Pitchers have not always pitched from 60' 6" from the plate and home run distance, park size from plate, varies even today.

Interestingly the park sizes differ to try and keep the difficulty of a home run equal in lieu of differences in air pressure between locations. It is rumored the Red Sox added a bullpen to give their new recruit Ted Williams, who was a left handed batter, an advantage at home.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2011/09/13/q-why-are-majo... I hate to cite forbes but its hard to find source for something I've known by word of mouth.

I mean, it's been 60ft 6 inches since 1888. Thats a long time without a change. 1800's baseball was VERY different.

http://bosoxinjection.com/2013/05/02/origins-of-baseball-in-...

However the mound height has changed as recently as the late 60s

Probably the largest (and most controversial) change in baseball was the adoption of the DH by the AL in the 70s.

For a full history of rule changes in baseball: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/rulechng.shtml

Dead/live ball was probably more consequential.

Around the beginning of Ken Burns' Baseball, Bob Costas made a similar point about distance. I suppose play could adapt to a certain degree but I have to believe that base paths that were 10%, much less 20%, longer or shorter would produce a radically different game.

As others have noted, there have been some adjustments. But I agree with your basic point.

(Not that I could ever get through that particular series. It was longer than the Civil War :-))

The most glorious thing about that series is how clearly public domain the soundtrack is... nothing but jangly, often unrecognizably slow piano renditions of "The Star Spangled Banner", "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Dixie". PBS is the coolest.

Rugby has remained Rugby, pretty much.

There's been various changes over the years, juggling points for tries and penalties, introducing sin bins, and so on, but it isn't really anything fundamental.

Where you do see changes has been in the physique of players, and to some extent it's cyclical. Teams adapt to circumstances, player sizes and types change, and then some outlier will come along and with a visionary coach shake things up again.

Wings used to be lighter sprinters, then Jonah Lomu came along and proved that wings could be big (at 6' 5" he towered over most players, average height for the time was 6' 1") and still fast.

People just didn't have the strength or weight to stop him, especially out on the wings. Players of sufficient size would typically be one of the forwards, the bigger players that dominate a scrum.

Teams adapted to the new paradigm though, wingers started getting bigger and stronger as tactics changed, and we've seen size and weight fluctuate back and forth a bit, sometimes internationals favour lighter faster, sometimes slightly slower but stronger.

Ehh, I'm in a club with some old timer alumni, and the stories they tell (and 1970s rugby videos on Youtube I've seen) tell a different story.

Even 20 years ago at a club level, many things were allowed that aren't now: Quicker scrums, high tackles, raking the ruck with cleats, and general hooliganism seem to have been more par for the course than today.

I saw a match from 1977, and there was no Croutch/Bind/Set. The scrum just walked up toward each other and engaged immediately. More dangerous, but a lot different than today. The line-outs didn't lift; the hooker threw the ball in like a football lob.

The reason for advent of behemoths like Lomu was the allowing of wholesale substitutions. This meant that players no longer had to play the full 80 minutes and so endurance could be sacrificed for power. This in turn has likely contributed to the increase in serious injuries in the game, particularly concussions. Rugby has changed a hell of a lot since the advent of professionalism in 1995 and they probably need to row some of those changes back imo.

I think that's more a matter of what the organizers think is best commercially than a signal that baseball is special. Like many other games, it allows people in a wide range of capabilities to play a game that is enjoyable to watch. That would probably be different if not for rule changes. For example, requiring wooden bats at top level likely was necessary to prevent offense from overpowering defense.

(That may be a somewhat generic pattern. In both tennis and table tennis, rules were adjusted when players started hitting the ball too hard. Similarly, in javelin throwing, the javelin was changed a few times to prevent players from throwing it out of the stadium)

Wasn't there something about the infield fly rule? :) But the same goes for soccer which has altered very little since the rules were laid down in the 19th century.

The game changed completely after the (first) war when the offside rule was introduced. But that was almost 100 years ago. Since then the rule changes have essentially been tweaks.

The offside rule's been there since long before WW1. They did alter the number of defending players needed to put a player on-side down from 3 to 2 in the mid 1920's. I'd argue that was altering an existing rule rather than a fundamental rule change though.

Then the other massive change was "no one can be offside when the ball is played" to "no one in an offside position can attempt to play the ball". Totally changed the way the offside trap was practiced, I believe.

EDIT: This is what I was thinking of:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offside_(association_football)...

Doesn't say when the change in interpretation was made.

The biggest change in my memory was the one that stopped the endless passes back to the keeper by preventing him from picking it up if it had been kicked back. Also worth mentioning is the 3 points for a win I suppose.

Soccer's changes have revolved mostly around the offside rule and introduction of yellow and red cards, I think.

> A home run is still 400 feet.

The stadiums change, though; 400 feet is just the warning track, sometimes. 310 can get you one in Fenway (on the left side of the field).

What kind of changes happened to the hockey rules?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005%E2%80%9306_NHL_season#Rul...

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