Portal:Baseball/Selected article/February, 2008
The dead-ball era is a baseball term used to describe the period between 1900 (though some date it to the beginning of baseball) and the emergence of Babe Ruth as a power hitter in 1920.
The dead-ball era refers to a period in baseball characterized by extremely low-scoring games; in fact, it was the lowest-scoring period in major league baseball history. Using major league statistics, the dead-ball era started in about 1903, and continued to 1918. A common misconception about the dead-ball era is that it was due entirely to a scarcity of home runs. However, home runs were also rare in the 1890s—a very high run-scoring decade. The lack of scoring in general during the dead-ball era, however, underscored the lack of home runs in the game at that time.
During the dead-ball era, baseball was much more of a strategy-driven game. It relied much more on stolen bases and hit and run type plays than on home runs. These strategies emphasized speed, perhaps by necessity. Teams played in spacious ball parks that limited hitting for power, and, compared to modern baseballs, the ball used then was "dead" from both its design and its overuse. Plays such as the Baltimore Chop, developed in the 1890's by the Baltimore Orioles team, remained in use. Once on base, a runner would often steal or be bunted over to second base and move to third base or score on a hit and run play. In no other era have teams stolen as many bases as in the dead-ball era.
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