> Imagine if somebody came up with a baseball with a magnet in it that was attracted to the catcher's glove. The catcher now has most of the control as to where the ball goes and all the pitcher is doing is applying speed to the ball. Would that be a natural advancement of the sport? Or would it be cheating?
Imagine if somebody invented a hollow aluminum baseball bat that could hit the ball much farther than a wooden bat could.
How did they "fundamentally change the nature of the sport"? As I understood things, aluminum bats were banned as an effort to make sure professional baseball records from the past stayed comparable to records from the present. They're not, of course, since early athletes didn't use steroids, but we're stuck with the wooden bats anyway.
People would be getting killed if MLB players were playing baseball with some of the aluminum and newer composite bats that are developed now.
I used to play in a men's modified pitch softball league where, even with the half-drunk middle-aged men that were playing, when the DiMarini composite bats came out, guys were using them and ripping line drives that could take your head off. Had to downgrade to a squishier series of softballs that didn't transfer as much of the force from the bat.
> Aesthetically, wooden bats are generally preferred to metal, both for their traditional appearance and satisfying traditional "crack", far superior to alloy bats' hollow "ping".
That seems to fall a bit short of "neutral point of view".
Imagine if somebody invented a hollow aluminum baseball bat that could hit the ball much farther than a wooden bat could.