There's a problem with this, though. Home runs are only exciting when they're relatively uncommon. If the home run trend continues, we will effectively see the disappearance of everything else that makes up the game of baseball. Players will either hit a home run, a flyout, or a strikeout. Risky plays (small ball) such as hit-and-runs, sacrifice bunts, and stolen bases will see a continued decline. This will sap all of the strategy and nuance out of the game, turning it into pure spectacle.
Not what I want. Not what a lot of baseball fans want.
I thought it was pretty well established that bunts, stealing, hit and run are all bad strategy. Entertaining but not anywhere near optimal play.
imagine if we averaged 0.5 home runs per game instead of the current 1.8. suddenly you’d need a lot more small ball type strategy to have any hope of scoring runs.
Not just games, but everything from the US (I live in Europe) seems to need to create spectacles where there are none with as much flashbang as possible. Just look at the difference in BBC documentaries vs ones coming from the US.
This trend kicked into high gear around 2000 and I had to stop watching channels like Discovery as they no longer aired documentaries but entertainment shows.
In the end, I stopped watching TV altogether as a result of this and we haven't had a TV subscription of any kind since around 2005. My wife uses Netflix once or twice a month though when my sister visits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corked_bat#History_of_use_in_M...
I suppose like any other sport, baseball is picky and arbitrary about what's OK and what's not OK when it comes to changing equipment and standards.
My other takeaway was that if your sport can't enforce it's only major rule, because physics, they'll find ways to lie to themselves to maintain the status quo. It's probably a profound lesson in politics if I really think about it.