Other possible causes include hitters muscling themselves up as never before during the off-season, the creation of smaller baseball parks and a general decline in the quality of pitching (every time there is an expansion of the leagues, the theory goes, the pitching talent pool is stretched thin, and batters have a field day, so to speak).
The initiatives included the fingerprinting of youths under the age of 16 and the creation of its own baseball leagues.
Before the creation of the National Association, baseball clubs were amateur affairs, largely populated with men who played for sport rather than money.
The creation of the position brings baseball into conformity with the other major sports leagues.
GEORGE B. KIRSCH Hackensack, N.J., Sept. 29, 2013 The writer is the author of "Baseball and Cricket: The Creation of American Team Sports: 1838-72" and "Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War".
The plan also calls for creation of a field for soccer and baseball in the southeast corner of Southtown, replacing athletic fields that are now part of Blackwell Park, a river-to-river expanse at the southern end of Northtown.
Batting Runs are a creation of Pete Palmer, an editor of many baseball encyclopedias, and are an attempt to measure all of a batter's positives and negatives: hits (even if they don't score a run), walks, hit-by-pitch and outs.
On the eve of trial, after a deposition that delved into numerous secrets of baseball ownership, an out-of-court settlement was reached that led to the creation of a new team, the Seattle Mariners, in 1977.
"It led directly to the creation of what we know today in baseball as the strike zone, and it destroyed the old game of baseball in which the pitcher only threw what the batter could hit".
But knowledge creation, unlike baseball, is not a zero sum game.
