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Reply to "The Impact of the Live Ball Era on Baseball"

Southpaw Dad,
Excellent report by your son! I really enjoyed looking over his graphs and comparisons of attendance with various offensive output. You may have gathered from some of my posts before that I am really into the historical aspects of baseball and I enjoy the fact that a young man would take the time and do the research necessary to support his premise that attendance directly correlates to offensive production starting in the Live Ball Era. A few of my thought on the subject matter he covered:

I've always felt the Live Ball Era essentially began a year earlier than most experts as most of the trends were already on the way up by 1919 even before the rule changes of 1920 were enacted. However this is just my personal preference and your son points out his reasons for feeling it began in 1920.

Most people don't know that while the any new spitballers were banned in 1920, two pitchers per team were "grandfathered" and allowed to throw it legally for the rest of their major league careers with Burleigh Grimes being the last to retire in the mid 1930's. Minor leaguers who relied on that pitch, including some 200 game winners were out of luck and destined to never see the light of the Major Leagues.

One slight error is that the throwing of the 1919 World Series did not come to light until the last week of the 1920 season and while this directly affected the 1920 season finish, the owners did not liven up the offense in 1920 as a direct result of the throwing of the 1919 World Series because it wasn't known for sure the Series had been thrown until the last week of the 1920 season.

I have always agreed with the idea about attendance correlating with offense and your son did an excellent job of proving his point! Just look at how attendance records were being broken yearly up to the 1994 strike as offense was increasing and then an offensive explosion brought attendance back up after the strike just as your son stated. During the 1960's attendance was declining in many markets as offense declined and the more offensive minded football took over as perhaps America's favorite sport.
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