The origins of this tweak to the baseball probably involve MLB execs sitting around a conference room table with a bunch of McKinsey pud-pullers staring at charts. Manfred stares at a chart with a peak in some convoluted metric of fan interest and enthusiasm that peaks in the late 90s and early aughts.
Manfred says, “I see this spike in enthusiasm about 2 decades ago; have you run any regression analyses to try to explain the rise?”
McKinsey wang wranglers shift uncomfortably in their seats.
“Goddammit what are you all not telling me?”
“Well, sir if we ran a correlation analysis, it would show the closest relationship to metrics such as average player head circumference, home runs, and needles in butts per capita.”
“Needles in butts? I remember something about a knee cream but no butt needles. I’m not following.”
“Roids, sir.”
“Hmmm.... No, no we can’t... can we?”
“We would not recommend it, sir. We think the reputational and, more importantly, long term medical liability associated with player health risk outweigh the benefits.”
“Godammit. Well, how else are we going to jack up the home run rate? I do remember a catchy saying... something like ‘chicks dig the long ball.’ Let’s all huddle up and delve more into that.”
“Well, sir, we’ve looked into college baseball home run rates per fly ball and we think giving the players an option to use an aluminum bat once per... “
“Stop it right there. TOO OBVIOUS. Too try hard. The game was built off the feeling of ash and hickory in a man’s bare hands. But the ball, now we’re on to something...”
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