This is for the White Sox suggestion box.
General Manager Ron Schueler has indicated he has narrowed his list to about six managerial candidates. They are said to include Jerry Royster, Alan Trammell, Larry Parrish, Dave Nelson, Davey Johnson and Willie Randolph.
As mentioned here before, the easiest way to solve the problem would be to summon Frank Thomas, Albert Belle and Robin Ventura and have them make the selection. In the event of a deadlock, Schueler always can follow the lead of Philip Wrigley, the late Cub caretaker.
Instead of hiring a full-time manager, Wrigley in 1961-62 had 10 coaches, five of whom rotated in the manager’s chair. The experiment was without precedent and failed badly, but there was no bloodshed. Nobody got the ax, which is something to consider for the Sox, who have hired and fired four managers in the last 10 years.
Here’s something else that won’t happen, at least not for a while.
The general managers and the owners’ executive council, at their meetings last week in Phoenix, discussed raising the height of the pitcher’s mound to 15 inches, which is where it was before the 1969 season, when a drastic decline in hitting led to it being lowered to 10 inches.
The lowering of the mound, in retrospect, was the fault of the pitchers. They were too good. The pitchers had dominated to such an extent that 1968 came to be known as the Year of the Pitcher. Bob Gibson of the Cardinals finished with a National League record 1.12 earned-run average. Detroit’s Denny McLain was 31-6, baseball’s last 30-game winner.
There were five .300 hitters–in both leagues. Boston’s Carl Yastrezmski won the American League batting title with a .301 average, an all-time low for a batting leader. Cincinnati’s Pete Rose led the NL at .335. The collective batting average in the AL was .230, in the NL .243.
Combined, there were 300 fewer home runs than the previous season, 700 fewer than the season before that. To help the hitters and handicap the pitchers, the mound was lowered five inches. Hitting immediately picked up and has prospered ever since. Some examples: in 1977, 56 players hit 20 or more home runs; this past season it was 80. Even more revealing: in 1977 only two players hit 40 or more home runs; by last season the number had risen to 12, five fewer than in ’96.
Bill Murray of the commissioner’s office, who heads the rules committee, concedes the situation now is reversed; it’s the pitchers who need help. Murray was noncommittal when asked if a change was likely.
“It may happen, but I don’t know how long the process would take. We would have to discuss it with the Players Association. If they didn’t agree, we would have to wait a year before we implement it–if that’s what the owners want to do.”
Some owners are in favor, mostly for economic reasons. Salaries have soared, especially among those with 30 or more home runs. At the same time, the moguls are convinced the pitchers’ wage, overall, would not be disturbed.
There is no question the games would be shorter because there would be less scoring. But there is a severe downside. It would be more difficult for the true sluggers such as Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey Jr. to challenge Rogers Maris’ one-season record of 61 home runs.
McGwire hit 58 last season, Griffey, 56. Both achievements were accompanied by a blizzard of publicity. But it’s possible they would adjust and their long-ball production would not be affected.
Then again, the owners could retreat to the secrecy of the back room and decide a better offensive-defensive balance could be achieved by extracting some of the juice from the ball, perhaps 10 to 15 percent. No one would know, except the chiefs at the very top.
Such tampering would not be without precedent. The ball was juiced up in the 1920s, with the arrival of Babe Ruth. By 1930 the combined NL average was .303.
A total of 125 players, 71 in the NL and 54 in the AL, batted .300. It was the year Hack Wilson hit 56 home runs and drove in 190 runs, NL records that still stand. George “Showboat” Fisher, a poor-fielding outfielder, was hitting .374 when the Cardinals sent him back to the minors.
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