Baseball, baseball

There was an article in today's L.A. Times about how the 500-home run club has become less and less exclusive. An excerpt:

When Mickey Mantle is 10th, Stan Musial 22nd and Joe DiMaggio 56th on the all-time home-run list, have the numbers gotten out of whack? How can you compare those players with today's big boppers?

You can't, any more than you could compare Ruth to Connor (Roger Connor, who held the career home run record before Babe Ruth shattered it), the modern era to the dead-ball era. We have, says television analyst Bob Costas, entered yet another era.

"In my mind," said Costas, "you had the era prior to 1900, or 1903 when the World Series started, then an era stretching from then until 1947, when a new phase began with the arrival of Jackie Robinson and the integration of baseball. Then, around 1994, yet another era started when some very strange things began to happen."

In the mind of Steve Hirdt, a vice president of the Elias Sports Bureau, this newest era dawned at a very specific moment.

"It was April 4, 1994," he said, "opening day between the Chicago Cubs and the New York Mets. Tuffy Rhodes of the Cubs, who would wind up with 13 home runs in 590 career at-bats, hit three home runs that day against Doc Gooden. That's what I'm calling the moment that ended the modern dead-ball era. You know, a dead-ball era is in the eye of the beholder."

I was at that game, and it's nice to know that I saw history in the making. Tuffy didn't just hit three home runs, he hit three consecutive home runs, in his first three at-bats. If I recall correctly, he only got a double in his fourth at-bat, and it was a major disappointment at the time.

Of course, the wind was blowing out at Wrigley Field that day, so it was really more of a fluke than anything else, evidenced by the fact Tuffy only got 10 more home runs in his major league career...and by the way, despite his offensive output, the Cubs lost the game, but it all turned moot when the players' strike happened later that season.

(Yes, I feel that I'm on a first-name basis with Tuffy. All of us who were at the park that day do.)