[greymule]

From my position behind the plate, I've seen balls change direction radically in their first 30 or 40 feet of travel. For example, balls that start toward the pitcher and then veer upwards and to the right. Also, the knuckle balls that are sometimes hit are still going so fast when they reach the outfielders that they take jumps of what appear to be several feet. I umpire at fields I used to play on. Now there are 20 homers a night where there weren't 20 homers a year in the dead bat era.

But when you attend a major league game and see a pitcher take a one-handed swing and then pull an outside pitch on a line against the facing of the mezzanine, you wonder what's going on up there, too.

Remember when a team that hit 200 home runs had to be a real murderers' row? Now a team hits 200 home runs and can't finish in the first division.