Was Major League Baseball busting at the seams and rotten to the core in 1998?
Were 600 Costa Rican factory workers conspiring to make baseballs fly farther?
Was the ball juiced, or were the players juiced? Or both?
Have the executives from a computer imaging company and a couple of Ph.D.’s from Penn State been in the juice, or do they know something baseball doesn’t?
Are baseball officials and representatives from Rawlings participating in a “Homerunballgate” coverup?
What did Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa know, and when did they know it?
(Did the Nuggets lose to Philadelphia because of a leather ball, and was the Broncos’ loss to San Francisco because of a bad pigskin, and if you merge the 76ers with the 49ers, do you get the 125ers?)
Are we having a ball yet?
According to the president of Universal Medical Systems Inc., baseballs used in 1998, when McGwire shockingly hit 70 home runs and Sosa trailed with an amazing 66, were discovered to have been considerably more lively and springy because of additional rubber in the core and a rubber ring. Whoops, there goes another rubber tree plant.
Universal Medical Systems’ primary purpose in society is to provide computer imaging evaluations of animal diseases.
So, don’t ask me. I guess they had some serious down time, or maybe they wondered if baseball was suffering from a case of mad cowhide disease.
Baseball retorts that the 1998 ball was as normal as every other season’s ball (but certainly not in the old dead-ball era).
The fine folks of Turrialba, Costa Rica (where the balls are assembled and sewn), Batesville, Miss., (where the rubber-and-cork core is produced and where my grandmother and step-grandfather lived on a farm), Tullahoma, Tenn., (where the cowhide cover is cowhided and George Dickel whiskey is distilled), and Ludlow, Vt., (where the yarn for the seams is woven) are not talking. Could they have gotten together secretly in 1997 and decided to create the “Live Ball”?
I do know this: When I followed McGwire and Sosa at the end of the 1998 season, they were hitting monster shots, and often. I assumed they had become superman from Wheaties or something. Something is right.
Both since have been accused of using performance-enhancing drugs – steroids – back then. Before Congress in March of 2005, McGwire said he didn’t want to talk about the past, and Sosa acted like he didn’t speak English (even though he speaks English better than I do.)
What about the Blake Street Bombers (pre-humidor) of 1998? Vinny Castilla did finish with 46 home runs, but Todd Helton had 25, Larry Walker 23 and Dante Bichette 22. The year before Walker was No. 1 in the National League with 49 homers; Andres Galarraga clubbed 41, Castilla 40 and Bichette 26. The altitude must have been “juiced” in 1997. The baseball is “anti-juiced” in Denver now. The club’s leading home run hitter last year, Matt Holliday, had 34.
The brilliant minds at Universal Medical Systems and two professors at Penn State are more or less claiming that the baseball was like “flubber”, a fictional big-bouncing substance from an old Walt Disney movie.
We must remember that scientists said long ago the curve ball didn’t actually curve. It was an optical illusion. And other scientists said that pitchers physically couldn’t throw a baseball 100 mph.
Interesting that it wasn’t mentioned in the announcement from the veterinarian computer experts that Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001. What was inside the baseball – miniaturized torpedoes?
What about the mud umpires rub on the baseballs before every game? Is there a secret ingredient?
The ball was not different in 1998. Some of the players had roid rage. Some of the ballparks were new and smaller. Some of the pitchers were lousy. Most, really. Some of the teams were very bad.
Frank Baker would love this discussion. He played from 1908-22 and led the American League in home runs four times. He never hit more than 12. He ended his career with 96 homers.
If you believe the “homerunballgate” conspiracy theorists, “Home Run” Baker, as he was called, could have hit 96 home runs in 1998.
Staff writer Woody Paige can be reached at 303-954-1095 or wpaige@denverpost.com.
