That isn't exactly true, and is quite a stretch in any aspects. Most fans know that when it comes to stolen bases, Rickey Henderson was king, and likely will be for some time to come, stealing the majority of his bases in the 1980s. Before him was Lou Brock who did it in the late 60s and 70s, and way back when it was done by Ty Cobb who did most of his damage in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The thing is there were quite a few decades between Cobb and Brock, but not much in the way of players who stole bases.
If you look at the top five of the modern era of baseball when it comes to stolen bases, you find Henderson, Brock, Cobb, and two more from the 80s: Tim Raines and Vince Coleman. Fact of the matter is, stolen bases were a big part of the game in the 1800s until about 1920. After 1920, the number of stolen bases declined sharply. They only gradually began to climb once again between 1950 and 1970, then again peaked in popularity from the mid-1970s through the 80s. Once again, the began to decline in the 1990s, and so fans began to think we lost an important part of the game.
Really, we didn't lose an important part of the game so much as we saw a brief phenomena in a major pitchers era. Furthermore, the game was made more for small ball and stolen bases. Certainly stolen bases were a major part of the game during the infancy of baseball, and far more popular than they ever would be again. However, a game where a home run didn't have to clear a fence, and doubles and triples were more rampant meant that stolen bases were more likely.
There first decline came with the arrival of Babe Ruth when he showed the baseball world that home run hitters were the future of the game. Stolen bases really bottomed out between the 1930s and 50s. In fact, in the year 1950, Dom Dimaggio lead the American League in stolen bases...with 15. It wasn't until the 1960s with Maury Willis, and later Lou Brock that they began to win the sport back over.
However, there is one major factor overlooked when it came to the revival of stolen bases, and that is the infamous artificial turf. To the best of my knowledge, the only park still using a form of turf is Rogers Centre of the Toronto Blue Jays which use a surface known as Grass 3D. However, in the 70s and 80s, AstroTurf surfaces were becoming all the rage in the MLB and NFL worlds. As most may recall, when it came to baseball, artificial turf generally meant that there was no diamond of dirt surrounding the infield. Rather, dirt surrounded each base individually with sections of turf between them.
This had various effects such as more base hits as ground balls had more speed, as well as a significantly overlooked aspect, the impact on base runners. While these are extreme examples, try running on a sidewalk versus the beach. It's obviously much more difficult to run in sand, thus it slows you down. Baseball fields worth the same way albeit to a lesser effect. Running on AstroTurf is not all that different than on a solid concrete surfaces, especially since this turf was usually on top of concrete. While baseball dirt isn't the same as the beach, running on dirt slows a runner down in baseball. Moreover, running in cleats only adds to the issue, an issue that doesn't exist when cleats are not worn.
In any event, I took the number of stolen base attempts (not stolen bases) from 1920-2010. I used 1920 merely because it was the just as the home run was coming into play, but more important, it is when the statistic Caught Stealing began to be used. Therefore, we can add Stolen Bases and Caught Stealing to truly find how many Stolen Base Attempts there were each season.
Now once we have the total for each season, we need to weight each value. In 1950, there were only sixteen MLB teams, and only 154 games played per season. Therefore, the MLB season only had 1,232 games taking place. In 2010, we have 30 MLB teams and 162 games played for a grand total of 2,430 games each year. Therefore, we multiply each season by a factor to give us the appropriate number of Stolen Base Attempts for each season as if 2,430 games were being played.
Note the blue line as to how far stolen base totals fell in the 1920s, and just how low there were by 1950. Even if 2,430 games were played in 1950, the total number of stolen bases would have been under 2,000. Compare that to 2010 when over 4,000 stolen bases were recorded. In fact, if we find the average for these values between 1920 and 2010, we get 3,871 stolen bases per year. While they may have fallen in the past twenty years, they have become steady in the past half decade and remain very close to the average.
However, you'll notice the red line on the graph indicating the number of MLB stadiums each year with some form of artificial turf. The first was in 1966 in the Astrodome. Comiskey Field began a year later, and in 1970, four additional stadiums began using it. A couple parks got rid of it before 1980, but you can see the number peaked at 10 for a number of years. It was only the recent advent of many new stadiums that left AstroTurf to be little more than a sports artifact.
Nevertheless, looking at the graphs on top of each other, we see a very positive correlation between the number of stolen bases and the number of aritifical turf stadiums, hence the Artificial Steal.
Now it is worth noting that while all players played on both grass and turf, Henderson spent the majority of his career with the Oakland Athletics which has only used grass in their stadium. However, many other more recent names near the top of the list including Tim Raines, Vince Coleman, Joe Morgan, Ozzie Smith, Cesar Cedeno, and even Barry Bonds spent the better part of their speedster years on AstroTurf.
Just food for thought next time ESPN babbles on about how stolen bases are being lost as a part of the game.
No comments:
Post a Comment