It’S Time To Take Chips Off The Rock

It’s all very suspicious. Surely there are a bunch of hyperkinetic Costa Ricans chewing coca leaves and winding our precious baseballs way too tight.

Banjo hitters are smashing upper-deck shots. Even a foul tip results in a “crraaaack” that echoes throughout the park. There seems little doubt that if Al Newman were still playing for the Twins, he’d hit 20 homers.

“You used to be able to dig your fingers into ‘em,” Twins coach Scott Ullger said of today’s baseballs. “Not anymore.”

They’re like rocks.

But Sandy Alderson says our suspicions are unfounded. The Costa Ricans are not sabotaging our national pastime.

Alderson, a major league baseball vice president, led a contingent to the Rawlings plant in Costa Rica earlier this week. He says he witnessed no funny business. All these billions of home runs, he says, are the result of lousy pitching.

“The balls are hitting the speakers,” manager Tom Kelly said, pointing to the Dome roof. “The balls almost never used to hit the speakers.”

Major league baseballs used to be made at the Rawlings plant in Haiti. The Haitians, God love them, were a terrific baseball-crafting people. They took great pride in every one of the 108 stitches in each ball.

Unfortunately, while the Haitian baseballs were very consistent, the Haitian government was anything but. Coups, ruling juntas, uprisings … by 1994 the political situation had deteriorated to the point where all the Haitian baseball factories had shut down. Rawlings moved its operations to Costa Rica.

That’s when the problems started. As early as ‘94, pitchers were complaining about a juiced-up ball. That year, there were 3,306 HRs.

In 1999, there were 5,528 home runs. Even with the addition of a couple of expansion teams, that’s a ridiculous rise. And it’s getting worse. There were 56 home runs hit just last Sunday, including six grand slams.

“Just playing catch, you can tell,” coach Paul Molitor said with a shrug. “You can’t make an indentation in the ball like you used to.”

Kelly sat on the bench before Tuesday’s game against the Angels and ran off a list of Punch-and-Judy hitters who have hit long, long homers in the Dome this season. Granted, several of his pitchers specialize in giving up moonshots. Still, 98-pound weaklings should not be launching 420-foot laser beams.

It’s clear that baseball is going to have to take steps to counteract the juiced ball. There are too many 9-7, four-hour games. Isn’t it better to have a 4-2 game in which a home run really means something?

One step baseball could take is to raise the pitching mound. Up until the late 1960s, the mound was 15 inches high. But in 1968, the pitching became so dominant that both leagues had combined earned-run averages of below 3.00.

Frank Howard was baseball’s only 40 home-run hitter. And Carl Yastrzemski was the only A.L. batter to hit .300.

That winter, baseball lowered the mound to 10 inches. The following season, there were seven 40-homer hitters, and baseball’s collective ERA went up by half a run.

But times have changed and the mound has stayed the same. It’s probably time to take a step backward.

“They should raise it,” Kelly agreed. “At least a couple of inches.”

That’s not tampering with the game. It’s returning the game to the way it was. Geez, we’ve got second basemen hitting 30 home runs these days. That’s not right.