Whiplash

As another home run flies out of another ballpark in another 10-9 ball game, another debate breaks out over what's going on in baseball. This time the argument is among the pitchers and hitters of the Colorado Rockies as they gather around a big-screen television in the visiting clubhouse of Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. They are watching the New York Mets and the Chicago Cubs slug it out at Shea Stadium.

Pitcher Mike Harkey jumps from his chair and shouts, "Look at that. The ball's wound too tight. It's a damn Titleist."

"Guys are just pumped from lifting weights, that's what it is," counters third baseman Charlie Hayes.

"You're going to see some middle reliever with 18 wins and a 10 ERA," offers Marvin Freeman, another pitcher.

"Hey," says catcher Joe Girardi, gleefully wielding an imaginary bat, "keep throwing 0-and-2 pitches down the middle, and that's what'll happen. Boom!"

Pitcher Darren Holmes is so disgusted he walks away from the set. "It's not fair anymore," he decides. "Pitchers ought to just go on strike. That's what we've got to do. All of us just go on strike."

The astonishing number of runs, hits, walks and home runs (box, page 19) continued to be a subject of discussion not only last Thursday at the Vet but also throughout baseball last week. We haven't seen numbers inflate this fast since cattle futures. Through two full weeks of the season only one day went by, April 6, on which at least one team didn't score 10 or more runs—and an act of nature most likely was responsible for that brief interlude. An 8-8 tie that day between the Cincinnati Reds and the St. Louis Cardinals was called because of rain after five innings. Teams cracked double digits 27 times in the first 163 games. In two of those cases the losing team scored at least 11 runs.

At a time when the NFL has tinkered with its rules to try to create more points, when the NHL is considering shoot-outs to break ties and the World Cup is faced with overcoming a pervasive distaste in the U.S. for low-scoring sports, baseball finds itself overloaded with offense. Increasingly there arc embarrassments of riches, such as the 22-11 shellacking the Boston Red Sox put on the Kansas City Royals on April 12, in which five Royal pitchers threw 230 pitches, and the 19-2 hammering the Los Angeles Dodgers laid on the Pittsburgh Pirates on Sunday, in which Cory Snyder, fresh off the disabled list, hit three homers and had seven RBIs.

The rash of runs has touched off more than the usual suggestions from pitchers, coaches and managers about a juiced-up baseball. The manufacturer, Rawlings, says the balls are made to the same specifications. However, the same cannot be said of big league hitters, who deserve some of the credit for what's going on. They are bigger, stronger and assisted more by instruction and technical aids than ever before. "Pitchers don't get away with mistakes the way they used to," says Oakland A's pitching coach Dave Duncan.

That said, baseball's boom time is made possible in the most part by the deteriorating state of major league pitching. The overall quality of it is, in a word, "terrible," says Toronto Blue Jay general manager Pat Gillick. "Miserable," says umpire Dave Phillips.