many umpires have shrunken that zone to the size of a laptop computer.
this is another problem with the majors today, as the umps are encouraged to shrink the strike zone in order to have higher scoring games. this, plus the widespread use of steroids which has turned so many sluggers into Popeye lookalikes, makes it virtually impossible to compare the rich spoiled brats who are today's all stars against the real men of the past.
all i can say is, when a grown man who is over 35 years of age manages to put on 30-40 pounds of lean muscle mass in the off season, and then claims he's never used drugs, i am seriously ROFLMAO.
except for hockey, all of the popular team sports in the US totally suck today.
i would rather watch the WWF than the World Series or the Super Bowl. at least Hulk Hogan and the Rock don't try to pretend to be anything other than what they are.
for a true sport today that is played by real heroes, tennis is the greatest by far. unlike the team sports in the US, tennis has greatly improved over the past couple decades.
this is apparent in the fact that the dominant body size (for male players--the evolution of the female game is about 20 yrs behind) has shrunk from the 6'3"-6'4" 200 lbs range of ten yrs ago to around 5'10" (Lleyton Hewitt) 150 lbs today (Hewitt, the No. 1 player, is actually smaller than the top three or four women players). this is significant because there are many more 5'10" people in the population than there are 6'4" people. therefore, there is a larger sample and skill is likely to be greater. in this sense, tennis has become similar to soccer. in contrast, baseball has gone from average sized people of high skill, to humongous people of less skill. as have football and basketball. this extreme deviation from average body size in the general population (and attendant decrease in skill; e.g. Shaq, who is considered the greatest player even though his free throw skills would be laughed off the court of most junior high teams) indicates that these sports have become more oafish. |
