Originally posted by plawrence:
Hitting even 50 home runs used to be kind of a magic number, since so few players reached even that total, but it seems as though after '94, guys hitting 50 homers in a season were a dime a dozen, which leads me to believe that the ball was juiced as well as some of the players.
A lot of the former players from the 60's and 70's agreed in the mid-90's that the ball was juiced. They said it was harder and bound tighter.
Some had tried to pass the increase of homers to the new smaller ballparks and expansion dluting the quality of pitching throughout the majors.
What convinced me else more than anything that something else was at play was that Brady Anderson hit 50+ homers in '96, I believe. Not only was the increase in players hitting 50 eye opening, but it seemed for a while that everyone else was hitting at least 20 to 30 homers.
