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Comment by ARandumGuy | Hacker News Reader

While home runs are exciting, there are limits to that. For several years the MLB has been dealing with "three true outcomes", where a large percentage of at bats end in either a strikeout, walk, or home run.

While this can be exciting for individual at bats, it becomes pretty boring if it's too common. This is because it invalidates every role except the pitcher and batter, and removes a lot of strategy from the game. While this may be fine if you only watch the occasional game, it can get really dull if you watch a lot of games every season.

Home runs are a lot of fun! One of the things that makes baseball exciting is that every pitch has the potential to result in a home run. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and helps keep things engaging. But when home runs become too prevalent, it eliminates other fun aspects of baseball, and makes the game one dimensional and dull.

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I believe the opposite to that era is the "Dead-ball era" over a hundred years ago.

> During the dead-ball era, baseball was much more of a strategy-driven game, using a style of play now known as small ball or inside baseball. It relied much more on plays such as stolen bases and hit-and-run than on home runs.

This was likely caused by reusing baseballs more, so it should be easy to recreate,

> Before 1921, it was common for a baseball to be in play for over 100 pitches. Players used the same ball until it started to unravel. Early baseball leagues were very cost-conscious, so fans had to throw back balls that had been hit into the stands. The longer the ball was in play, the softer it became—and hitting a heavily used, softer ball for distance is much more difficult than hitting a new, harder one. The ball was also softer to begin with, making home runs less likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead-ball_era

I dig it

I don't quite get what the difference is between now and when Sosa, Bonds, and McGuire were hitting homers, where apparently homers are monotonous. Are we pretending that wasn’t peak baseball? I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout. There are no grand slams without base hits true, but without the home runs base hits are boring.

Close plays on the base paths are pretty exciting.

> I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout.

The problem is that the strikeout or walk is much more common than the home run.

... On reflection, reading this thread, I think this may be yet more of the "baseball is a radio sport" thing, which is also why it dominated before TV, when football started to take over.

Descriptions of close plays are fun. Homers are flashy to watch and easy to understand. The latter may catch more casual-viewer eyeballs.

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