Off the Plate and Way, Way Outside

There is a never-ending debate in the world of sports involving equipment. Many contend that improved equipment has made for greater advancements in every sport. I concur, yet I say athletes today are far superior in strength, fitness, and conditioning and it is the athlete that progressed sports beyond what it was years or decades ago.

I contend that the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team of 1967, the last time they won the National Hockey League’s (NHL) most coveted prize, the Stanley Cup, would get crushed by the NHL’s worst team in hockey today which according to point standings would be the Columbus Blue Jackets of Columbus, Ohio. They were not even in the league in 1967.

During the recent Masters Tournament, I watched as professional golfers trained prior to the event like they were ready to participate in an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) brawl. Workouts, preparation, and training in every sport have advanced significantly. Many athletes have multiple trainers, specialized coaches, and even psychologists. It may well be that the distant future holds a man like the Lee Major’s character Steve Austin in “The 6 Million Dollar Man”, who was “better, stronger, and faster than he was before.”

Let us compare athletes by looking at the most basic of sports. In 1954, Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile barrier – the fastest man today has shaved 17 seconds off of Bannister’s record. Here is a look at those long-distance running times from 1850 onward.

I suspect shoes, shorts, and shirts have improved, but certainly not to the extent of the athlete. In 1893 America’s David Lippincott held the 100-meter running record at 10.6 seconds. A century later Jamaica’s Usain Bolt could almost jog that distance in that same time frame.

In baseball three players have hit the most home runs in six individual seasons. They are Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa, however, steroids rather than player talent and athleticism seemed to have contributed broadly to their achievements as well as their absence from the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. Eliminating these three, the record belongs to Aaron Judge, who in 2022, hit 62-round trippers without the enhancement of steroids. It was Judge’s 6^th year in the league.

But hold the phone, keep the record book open, and throw away the Bud Light! According to statistical analysis by Dartmouth College scientists and the American Meteorological Society, it may well be that climate change helps the long ball.

The related story states, “When air heats up, molecules move faster and away from each other, making the air less dense. Baseballs launched off a bat go farther through thinner air because there’s less resistance to slow the ball.” According to the fact that thinner or “less dense” air will make the ball fly further, the Colorado Rockies, playing at a mile high should hold every home run record ever, yet tied in 48^th place for most home runs as a Denver player is Todd Helton who hit 49 in 2001. Further, the stadium in Toronto, the Rogers Centre, previously called the SkyDome, has a retractable roof, which is often closed but has recorded the most home runs in a single season. It is not the shortest ballpark in the major leagues. That distinction belongs to Fenway Park in Boston.

What makes the story very much contestable and questionable is the Dartmouth College statement, “Hotter, thinner air that allows balls to fly farther contributed a tiny bit to a surge in home runs since 2010 . . . “ Global temperatures have actually declined in the last 8½ years – the only year with above average global temperatures since 1998 was 2016.

I often write about the proponent, asinine studies using anthropogenic climate change as an indisputable backdrop, but if this is the type of research activist college scientists are performing, heaven help academia.

To end this blog, I could use a number of delightfully comical quotes by Yogi Berra instead I cite one by Bob Ueker as Harry Doyle in the movie, “Major League” which reminds me most of this study, “He’ll need a rocket up his ass to catch that one; that baby’s out of here.”