Baseball in Evolution.

Baseball in the 1920s was filled with superlative players, managers, and teams and with game-altering changes in strategy, equipment, and ballparks. For decades baseball had been played as a game of hit-and-run, choked-bat singles and bunts, and basestealing; it had focused on the play among pitchers, short-ball hitters, and infielders. Such great singles hitters and base runners as the Detroit Tigers' Ty Cobb and the Pittsburgh Pirates' Honus Wagner epitomized this approach to the game. But change came as the decade began and Babe Ruth made his debut as a New York Yankee after being sold by the Boston Red Sox. The preceding year he had hit an astonishing twenty-nine home runs for Boston, and in 1920, his first season with the Yanks, he smashed an almost unbelievable fifty-four homers. League owners and managers — and the fans — fell...