Description:

Y'all remember the short version of Make War? The title works pretty much the same way. 
You don't remember? There's bound to be some place online where you can listen to the whole album.
There's also a long version of the song. And of the title of this story. No relation.
You could argue there's also a Smiths reference in there. I am going to leave it at that.

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The Ball is Dead, Long Live the Ball

A human life often comes in phases. Freud said so, I think. There's also the "no-phase" where a child negates everything. It learns that before it learns about nihilism. Maybe...
There's a rebellious phase. A pink hair phase. A miserable, everybody hates me phase... Human life is like the moon - there's always a sun. Sometimes you can't see it, though. 
Sometimes that's because you're standing in front of it. Too close to it. Other times it's because you don't want to see it. It's easier to be scared of something you can't see.
Sometimes it's good to keep your eyes closed. Especially when you're sleeping. It's just so straining...

Baseball has, and has had, its phases, too. Except, they're called eras. Maybe a reference to ERA. Probably not, though. 

A notable era was the dead-ball one. Back when America was still great (supposedly). Small ball was being plaid. Snotballs for everyone. 
Then there was a guy who brought a change, they called him The Great Child - the greatest to ever step on the field. What a Babe!

Around the same time, another era was wreaking havoc in The Greatest Country on Earths' favourite pastime. 
That was before the great depression. It was rather depressing regardless.

A man named Ban, head of the American League, had a major scandal happening under his nose. It involved dark-coloured footwear and money. 
He entered the annals of the sport. He's at home in Cooperstown for eternity. 
Some other guy, named Joe, was sent packing. He couldn't read. He had no shoes either. That's his claim to fame. 

Fast-forward, past another Great War, blacks are now allowed to play baseball with the big boys. 42 is the answer to that. To this day.
The negros got to keep their league for another decade and a half, though.
On of them, made his way up into the Big Leagues - and amongst all kinds of racism - including actual/serious threats to his life (not some KYS-BS) gave the Great yet late Bambino
a serious run for his money. 
Almost 30 years after "his kind" was allowed to play baseball at the highest level, a black man dethroned the Sultan of Swat. It was not the most popular feat. 
Neither was his record meant to last. 

Before it could be broken however, another era had to begin:
Rumour has it that the 80's in baseball where like any other place in the 80's that was crowded with fame and money.  
And then they pretty much banned coke in the sport. 

Fear not - there are more efficient drugs for that sport. Cocaine might make you feel like you have super-human abilities. It's not too much more than a feeling. 
Mankind had to come up with something better: the kind of substance that can turn man into to battlestations. 

It was the only way both the single-season and career homerun records could still be broken. 
The Buddy over-seeing that scandal? You know where they put him... a little village in New York State. 

And that brings us to the current era. The technological era. Empirical data and statistical values have become the new strategies. There's still loud-mouthed managers, thank fuck!
There's also other loud people, and loud bats, and an entirely different kind of binning process. 

The Commissioner in charge, well, for all his flaws and failures, I sure hope he, too, finds home in New York. He brought professional baseball to Europe. 
He made sure baseball is played during a global pandemic. Alas, he didn't manage to avoid the clusterfuck of negotiations that preceded that. 
I doubt he did that to force baseball content creators to scramble for ideas - that was just a side-effect. 

When all is said and done - I am glad that Roy Hobbs never made it to the Hall of Fame. Not because he's not actually a real player, but because he basically had the same attitude
as Messrs. McGwire, Bonds, A-Rod to name only a few: I want to be the best there ever was. 
Hell of an approach to a team game. 

There's probably many things that Derek Jeter never understands - about baseball, about life, about anything at all - but he sure as hell understood that it made him uncomfortable 
to be singled out as anything but a team player. 

Billy Bean supposedly took a small-ball approach with small money. They called it Moneyball. 

These days, it seems, many organisations take a long-ball approach with big money. I don't know what they call it.

In the 90's and 00's the players were juiced. Nowadays the ball acts like it's juiced. 

I hate to call it the juice-ball era of baseball. 

But I might still do it, when no one is listening... 

And for anyone reading this - you can always read the title again...