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[This is part of a series exploring the Baseball Tarot. If you would like to prompt for a part of the game or a card from the deck, all the rest of the month is available for your curiosity, about either baseball or Tarot. Leave a comment with a prompt if you want in. All other comments are still welcome, of course.]
Dingers, round-trippers, or touch-em-all, however you define or refer to them, home runs are one of the flashiest and most gratifying results for the offense and one of the least happy things for the defense to witness. Home runs are a hit that allows the batter to successfully complete a full circuit of the bases and score a run without stopping for another batter or being put out. Most home runs in this era are generated by a fly ball that leaves the field of play while in fair territory without touching the ground, at which point the umpire awards the home run to the batter, but it is possible (and very exciting) to watch a player hit a ball that falls just right to take advantage of a field and allow a player to circuit the bases without the ball actually leaving time field. Inside-the-park home runs are extremely rare, but they are possible, even at the Major League level.
These days, to assist the umpires in making their decisions, the tops of the fences (and the flagpole padding in Comerica Park) are often painted in a bright yellow or other very visible color so that if the umpire needs to make a judgment about whether a ball is a home run, there's a nice bright background to work off of. The other assist in most ball parks today involve a mesh added to the foul poles, pointing into fair territory, that provide a bigger visual screen to see whether a ball slicing toward foul territory passes in front of the foul poles before it leaves the field of play (foul ball) or leaves the field and passes behind the pole (home run).
Hitting s home run is not a free pass to do anything - the bases still have to be touched in their correct order, the player has to stay in the basepath, and excessive celebrations of the accomplishment are strongly discouraged. Those who are "showboating" will get a swift talking-to from their coaches and the umpire at the learning leagues about not taunting one's opponents. At higher leagues, those players may find themselves the recipient of "accidental" brushbacks, spikes-up slides, and other plausibly deniable methods of revenge as the angry players get back at the player who taunted them. Nobody likes to have it rubbed in their faces.
For a long time, the record set by Roger Maris in 1961 of 61 home runs in a season looked like it would stand up to any challenges from players, as teams still seemed to be basing their offensive capabilities on walks and hits, rather than relying on a home run to produce the majority of their runs. With more effective training regimens (and possibly the use of performance-enhancing substances), sluggers as a class emerged as a way of trying to put life back into a game that was losing audience, and especially television audience, to more contact sports like American football. The more home runs that could be hit and placed into the highlight reel, the more baseball would stay in the national consciousness. Baseball got its wish with a high-profile chase from two National League players, Mark McGwire of the Saint Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, of the home run record. The 1998 season would have other games cut into when either of those gentlemen would step up to the plate for the duration of their at-bat to see if they would produce another home run the their total.
The 62nd home run that Mark hit that year was not the one you would hope to have as a record-breaker. It barely cleared the left field fence, a line drive with enough force behind it to get out, instead of a majestic and towering fly ball that would have excellent quality for the record books. It might serve as a foreshadowing to what would happen just three years later, as another player embroiled in scandal involving performance-enhancing drugs, Barry Bonds, would defeat McGwire's new record of 70 by hitting 75 home runs in 2001 in what was a far less exciting season for baseball. When covered in a cloud of suspicion that the achievement was not done naturally, record-breaking years just don't have that same zip to them.
If this card appears in your reading, it represents great success at individual pursuits. Runs are guaranteed, so long as all the procedures are followed, so it can be taken at a slightly slower pace than an all-out dash. Expect some increased visibility as well from this success, as hitting long balls tends to attract attention from everyone. The next at-bat may be tougher, as once one home run has been hit off a pitcher, they tend not to serve anything else remotely hittable for the rest of the game. Continue to exercise good judgment and you will be able to contribute again with walks or base hits off of less exciting pitches.
There is a downside to hitting home runs. Once tasted, there's always a temptation to try and keep hitting more home runs, to the point of trying to force that kind of swing when it isn't really there. Altering the swing like that generally makes it mechanically unsound and leads to a lot more strikeouts, seeing up a feast or famine sort of situation for the hitter. High-level play demands the ability to produce on a fairly consistent basis, so the player that chases the big stuff all the time will find themselves swinging at bad stuff and likely getting a trip to the hitting coach to get their priorities straightened out. Chasing individual glory at the expense of team success doesn't end well - both players and team need to find the right balance of allowing the individuals to take pride in their work and be recognized for their accomplishments and accomplishing the overall goals of the team - to win their games.
Dingers, round-trippers, or touch-em-all, however you define or refer to them, home runs are one of the flashiest and most gratifying results for the offense and one of the least happy things for the defense to witness. Home runs are a hit that allows the batter to successfully complete a full circuit of the bases and score a run without stopping for another batter or being put out. Most home runs in this era are generated by a fly ball that leaves the field of play while in fair territory without touching the ground, at which point the umpire awards the home run to the batter, but it is possible (and very exciting) to watch a player hit a ball that falls just right to take advantage of a field and allow a player to circuit the bases without the ball actually leaving time field. Inside-the-park home runs are extremely rare, but they are possible, even at the Major League level.
These days, to assist the umpires in making their decisions, the tops of the fences (and the flagpole padding in Comerica Park) are often painted in a bright yellow or other very visible color so that if the umpire needs to make a judgment about whether a ball is a home run, there's a nice bright background to work off of. The other assist in most ball parks today involve a mesh added to the foul poles, pointing into fair territory, that provide a bigger visual screen to see whether a ball slicing toward foul territory passes in front of the foul poles before it leaves the field of play (foul ball) or leaves the field and passes behind the pole (home run).
Hitting s home run is not a free pass to do anything - the bases still have to be touched in their correct order, the player has to stay in the basepath, and excessive celebrations of the accomplishment are strongly discouraged. Those who are "showboating" will get a swift talking-to from their coaches and the umpire at the learning leagues about not taunting one's opponents. At higher leagues, those players may find themselves the recipient of "accidental" brushbacks, spikes-up slides, and other plausibly deniable methods of revenge as the angry players get back at the player who taunted them. Nobody likes to have it rubbed in their faces.
For a long time, the record set by Roger Maris in 1961 of 61 home runs in a season looked like it would stand up to any challenges from players, as teams still seemed to be basing their offensive capabilities on walks and hits, rather than relying on a home run to produce the majority of their runs. With more effective training regimens (and possibly the use of performance-enhancing substances), sluggers as a class emerged as a way of trying to put life back into a game that was losing audience, and especially television audience, to more contact sports like American football. The more home runs that could be hit and placed into the highlight reel, the more baseball would stay in the national consciousness. Baseball got its wish with a high-profile chase from two National League players, Mark McGwire of the Saint Louis Cardinals and Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs, of the home run record. The 1998 season would have other games cut into when either of those gentlemen would step up to the plate for the duration of their at-bat to see if they would produce another home run the their total.
The 62nd home run that Mark hit that year was not the one you would hope to have as a record-breaker. It barely cleared the left field fence, a line drive with enough force behind it to get out, instead of a majestic and towering fly ball that would have excellent quality for the record books. It might serve as a foreshadowing to what would happen just three years later, as another player embroiled in scandal involving performance-enhancing drugs, Barry Bonds, would defeat McGwire's new record of 70 by hitting 75 home runs in 2001 in what was a far less exciting season for baseball. When covered in a cloud of suspicion that the achievement was not done naturally, record-breaking years just don't have that same zip to them.
If this card appears in your reading, it represents great success at individual pursuits. Runs are guaranteed, so long as all the procedures are followed, so it can be taken at a slightly slower pace than an all-out dash. Expect some increased visibility as well from this success, as hitting long balls tends to attract attention from everyone. The next at-bat may be tougher, as once one home run has been hit off a pitcher, they tend not to serve anything else remotely hittable for the rest of the game. Continue to exercise good judgment and you will be able to contribute again with walks or base hits off of less exciting pitches.
There is a downside to hitting home runs. Once tasted, there's always a temptation to try and keep hitting more home runs, to the point of trying to force that kind of swing when it isn't really there. Altering the swing like that generally makes it mechanically unsound and leads to a lot more strikeouts, seeing up a feast or famine sort of situation for the hitter. High-level play demands the ability to produce on a fairly consistent basis, so the player that chases the big stuff all the time will find themselves swinging at bad stuff and likely getting a trip to the hitting coach to get their priorities straightened out. Chasing individual glory at the expense of team success doesn't end well - both players and team need to find the right balance of allowing the individuals to take pride in their work and be recognized for their accomplishments and accomplishing the overall goals of the team - to win their games.