The Pecan Park Eagle

CARL YASTRZEMSKI WON THE 1968 AL BATTING TITLE WITH A BATTING AVERAGE OF .301. IT WAS THE ONLY TIME IN HISTORY THAT THE ONLY .300 HITTER IN A LEAGUE WON AN MLB BATTING TITLE.

Our esteemed colleague Bill Gilbert’s recent column here in The Eagle poked at the possibility that the presence of .300 batters in the big leagues may be soon on the way to slipping into rarity or virtually extinct phases in baseball hitting history.

It could happen, but most probably will not. Remember 1968? The so-called “Year of the Pitcher?”

Baseball fans don’t cram themselves into ballparks all over the big leagues to watch outs, great catches only, pitching duels exclusively, or fluke plays in the 9th that allow one team to take a 1-0 or 2-1 win every time, We all know better than that. We like power-hitting and we’ve been in love with the parabolic blast of bat upon baseball into fast flight since Babe Ruth pulled it of the game’s bag of little used tricks and made the home run into an every game hope and expectation  by everyone who buys a ticket.

Look what happened after 1968. It was a year symbolized forever by Cardinals pitcher Bob Gibson and his MLB-leading ERA of 1.12 – by an All Star Game in Houston that the National League won by 1-0 – and by an American League battle title won by Carl Yastrzemski with a batting average of only .301. It was the only time in history that the only hitter to bat .300 or better on the season won the batting title, and at almost the lowest it could have been and still found itself resting among the traditional marker on good hitting period. Yastrzemnski won. There were no other .300 hitters in the 1968 AL season. The nearest man to “Yaz” at season’s end was Danny Cater of the Oakland Athletics. Cater batted .290 as runner-up for the batting title that year.

Not much to write home about. And not enough to produce the kind of adrenaline rush in fans that precedes season-ticket purchases.

Baseball had to do something to save hitting and they did. They determined that the height of the pitching mound and the broad strike zone had to change. These factors had been giving the pitcher way too much advantage in his eternal battle with the batter. Putting that kind of advantage in the hand and glare of a talented, very big, and intimidating figure like Bob Gibson and the formula for a one-sided battle with most hitters had been struck, most unfavorably, against the latter.

So, before 1969, baseball lowered the pitching mound a few inches and shrunk the zone for called strikes. The changes did not mess up the greats like Gibson, Oh, his ERA “jumped” from 1.12 to 2.18,alright,  but he still threw 28 complete games in 1969, same as 1968, only this time, he led the league in that department – and he won another 20 games, only two less victories than he compiled during his 1968 poster boy season.

Rod Carew of the Twins won the first of his several batting titles in 1969 with a more normal championship mark of .332.

1968 had been an aberration year in favor of pitching, just as 1930 had been an over-the-top year in favor of hitting for average and power. For example, the last place NL team, the Phillies, batted .315 as a team, but still could not bat their way out of the basement with bad pitching.

Imbalances occur from time to time that give the offense and defense a one-sided advantage over the other and will need to be fixed for the sake of the game’s continuity, integrity, and entertainment value to the fans. Each time one becomes apparent, it should be up to baseball to take a broad, transparent, and fair look at why a situation has arisen and to specifically address both causes and cures before launching into any kind of extreme rule changes that might fundamentally alter the game. For example, even though it is not a present concern, if power hitting during the hopefully “post-steroids era” were to fall off significantly, the reactive introduction of metal bats, in our view, would be just as dishonest a tool as HGH use by players. Anything that artificially changes the game, and its historical records, in an abrupt significant manner should be avoided at all costs.

Why? Because people who love baseball embrace it as a game that shows how players of any size or  background are capable of realizing the attainment of hope and possibility that comes from playing this game as it was always intended. And that has nothing to do with misplaced adoration by the few for players who can afford the best performance-enhancing drugs – or the most expensive metal home-run bats. We fans don’t give a damn for the narcissists who use the game to feather their own nests by any course of action they can use to escape detection.

Governed with integrity and a watchful eye upon the balance of things between offense and defense over time, baseball will always find legitimate ways to correct imbalances, but there will never come a time when it is OK with most of us fans for baseball to change the essential human game through the allowance of PED’s – or metal bats – by anyone on salary to play the game.

Need a role model for how to play the game? – Read on for today’s progress report on Jose Altuve – the little man on the right way to one of baseball’s biggest prizes – the 2014 American League and Major League Baseball batting titles!

______________________________________________________________________

THE PECAN PARK EAGLE DAILY MLB 2014 BATTING CROWN EYE:

NOTES, 9/20 AM: Jose Altuve took part of the night off Friday, using his rest break from defense as the DH and going 3 for 3 in the Astros’ 10-5 loss to Seattle at MMP. He then left the game for pinch hitter Marc Krauss rather than put a perfect offensive game on the line in a game that meant little. Victor Martinez kept the heat on Altuve in a 2 for 4 night for the Tigers in their 10-1 bashing of the Royals at KC. Small gains are better than losses every time. Altuve has increased his batting race lead over Martinez from .007 to .008 points in one night. He also broke Craig Biggio’s 3-hit games mark of 23, set back in 1998. Altuve’s new 24th game record happened in the bottom of the 5th with a single to left. Want more? Altuve’s third hit of the night and 216th of the season tied him with Magglio Ordonez for the most season hits ever by a native Venezuelan. Until last night, Ordonez had been sitting alone at 216 since 2007.

The Eagle Eye on Jose Altuve’s pursuit of the 2014 American League and MLB batting average championships will continue daily through the balance of the season. For now, it’s a two-man race between Altuve and Victor Martinez of the Detroit Tigers. Should that change, so will our reporting format. – Bill McCurdy