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	TODAY: Monday, May 15
	The theories behind the explosion ESPN.com
	It is not your imagination or an overdose of Baseball Tonight. Home runs are up from last year. When, of course, they were up from the year before. Through Tuesday, there have been an average of 2.58 home runs hit per game. That's higher than last year's record of 2.28 homers per game. There were 5,528 home runs smacked, belted, crushed and launched in 1999. This season, we are on pace to witness over 6,200 long balls. What's going on? With the help of ESPN.com's baseball experts, here are the five prevailing theories: 1. It's the beefy sluggers! Walk into any postgame clubhouse these days and you'll find ... well, no one. At least, hardly anyone. Most players spend the first 30 minutes after a game in the weight room, obsessively following a strength-training regimen that's turned the average major leaguer into an NFL linebacker. Jose Canseco is a prime symbol of today's bulked-up sluggers perhaps benefitting from smaller parks and livelier balls. Don't laugh. Ballplayers aren't just bigger and stronger than their predecessors in the '70s and '80s -- they generate more bat speed and do more damage with pitches out of the strike zone, or ones that have fooled them and forced them to hit off their front foot. "It seemed like it happened all in one year," Dwight Gooden recently said. "After I came back (following an 18-month drug suspension in 1994-95), I noticed right away everyone looked huge. And the hitters were swinging much harder, too." That's partially due to America's love affair with the home run. Everyone craves the long ball, even the No. 8 and 9 hitters in a lineup. Home runs sell -- or to be more precise, home runs pay. It's the long ball that drives up salaries, which is why Cubs' GM Ed Lynch said, "No one's embarrassed to strike out anymore. A lot of hitters will gladly exchange three strikeouts in a game if, in the fourth at-bat, they've hit a home run. That's how arbitration and free agency have changed the game." And what better way to hit a 400-foot blast than to simply overpower the ball. Hitters' devotion to bigger arms and chests doesn't end with weight lifting; they ingest protein like candy and use muscle-expanding supplements like creatine and, to a lesser extent, andro. Unfortunately for pitchers, however, a perfect body doesn't translate into better fastballs. If increasing velocity was as simple as increasing the weights on a barbell, David Cone said, "We all would've tried it years ago, believe me." -- Bob Klapisch 2. It's the bad pitching! It began in 1969 and now 31 years later you wonder if this is what baseball officials really wanted in the first place. Offense, offense and more offense. Back in '69, legislation was passed that, in its simplest terms, was designed to kill pitching. One of the biggest changes was the lowering of the mound from 15 to 10 inches, after the two leagues had combined for a 2.99 ERA in 1968. Kids nowadays aren't growing up with the idea of throwing the baseball every day, at least in the United States. Rather, they head to the batting cage to work on their swing. A skeptic would say that this thinking is far too easy of a solution as to why the home run has become so much more prevalent than the dominating pitcher. While it's never that easy of a solution, I do believe hitters are so much more ahead of pitchers now because they usually start at an earlier age and spend more time at it. With the modern-day rules bent in their favor, every advantage has swung to the hitter. A good 93-94 fastball up in the strike zone is the toughest pitch to hit -- it was when I played and it still is. Almost every hitter has an uppercut swing, so it's more difficult to hit that pitch than one lower in the zone. If the fastballs aren't in that 93-plus range -- and I don't think you see as many good fastballs as you used to, particularly among starting pitchers -- that pitch becomes a little easier to hit. Weight training has taken off, but I've yet to see or hear of a pitcher who has flourished from upper-body weight training. Pedro Martinez, for example, isn't throwing any harder because he lifts weights. The theory is that pitchers need to have a free and easy arm, which goes against the philosophy of bulking up. Thus, Martinez's success has come from his great natural ability and his constant throwing of the baseball or whatever he could find in his youthful years. That's what builds up arm strength, which I believe is so lacking among pitchers now. --Dave Campbell Earl Weaver baseball The easiest way around the bases is with one swing of the bat. --Earl Weaver's "Third Law" In his classic treatise, "Weaver on Strategy," the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles says, "In my mind, the home run is paramount, because it means instant runs. The minute you hit a homer you have a run, no questions asked ... Why people can't see that, I'll never know." Another of Weaver's Laws went, "If you play for one run, that's all you'll get." Pete Palmer agreed. In 1984, the same year that "Weaver on Strategy" came out, "The Hidden Game of Baseball" was published. Written by Palmer and John Thorn, "The Hidden Game" turned conventional wisdom on its ear. Palmer wrote, "Every mathematical analysis I've seen shows that the intentional walk is almost always a bad play, stolen bases are only marginally useful, and the sacrifice bunt is a relatively useless vestige of the dead-ball era when they didn't pinch-hit for pitchers." And of course, 15 years later those things are even more true now. As Palmer said recently, "In a high-scoring era, why give up an out, or get thrown out on the bases, if you are more likely to score on a home run later?" What does Palmer think of today's game? "The endless home runs on the game highlights are silly, since there is little action in a home run besides seeing the ball fly over the fence. And that can get boring." Even Earl Weaver may agree with that. -- Rob Neyer 3. It's the ball! Joe Nossek has handled hundreds of thousands of baseballs over almost 40 years as a player and coach. But none were the like the one he found in a batting practice bin last week at Comiskey Park. It had a needle sticking out of it. He believes it came from the machine that stitches the cover onto the ball at the factory. "They sew 'em so tight, they can't even get the needle out," Nossek said. This marks the third year in a row that baseball's offensive totals are trending higher. But it may be the 33rd year in a row that pitchers have had suspicions about someone engineering a mysterious rabbit ball, allegedly designed to increase run-scoring and bring more casual fans to the ballpark. White Sox reliever Keith Foulke compares gripping the current Bud Selig ball to "squeezing a golf ball." Many pitchers have complained that the seams are fractionally lower than in previous seasons, making it more difficult to get movement on pitches. Cubs ace Kerry Wood even suffered a ball-related setback in his rehab assignment last weekend. Wood developed a blister on his right middle finger while pitching with the Pacific Coast League ball. Cubs GM Ed Lynch believes the PCL ball has higher seams than the Selig balls, which Wood has been using in his workouts. In the past, pitchers' complaints fell on deaf ears. But this year they will get their day in court. Commissioner Selig recently asked Sandy Alderson, his vice president for baseball operations, to formally compare this season's batch of baseballs to those from previous years. Selig will be surprised if the study shows any significant difference between balls. "Our guys don't believe it," Selig said. Then again, it's not them dodging line drives and watching their ERA skyrocket. -- Phil Rogers 4. It's the small ballparks! If you're a big-league hitter, ballparks have a lot in common with supermodels these days. Great dimensions. Forget about 36-24-36. Think about 315-307-71. You can just hear Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and every other right-handed hitter in baseball lustily whistle at that 315-foot sign along the left-field line in Enron Field. When Barry Bonds first made eye contact with that 307-foot sign along the right-field line at Pacific Bell Park, he must have thought about buying it a drink and flirting with 71 home runs. And, of course, every hitter alive is walking on thin air the first time they set foot in Coors Field. These back-to-the-future bandboxes are enough to make pitchers sick. "Every field in this league sucks," Chris Brock said after making his Phillies debut at Enron Field earlier this month. "The ball jumps. No wonder guys hit 70 home runs a year. It's not because they're better. It's because the fields are smaller and the ball is juiced. Baseball has turned into a game of home runs. That's why five or six guys are hitting 50 a year. I might hit 10 in this league if I got 500 at-bats." Brock, an outfielder at Florida State, actually has one home run already this season. After Andy Ashby first met Enron Field, he asked Jeff Bagwell if the walls move back before the games start. The answer, of course, is no. The walls never move back. They only move in and get lower. Just look at some of the differences between the old and the new and the renovated. It was a 375-foot poke to the power alleys in the Astrodome. It's 13 feet shorter than that in Enron Field. It was a 328-foot shot to right field at 3Com Park. It's 21 feet shorter at Pac Bell. The right-field line is five-feet shorter at the Ballpark at Arlington than it was at old Arlington Stadium. The power alleys in the Oakland Coliseum were shortened by the football renovation a few years ago. The fences were moved in 10 feet at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Shorter, shorter, shorter. That's the trend without an end. That's why Mark McGwire's record of 70 home runs will be broken in our lifetime. That's why some pitcher someday might just hit 10 home runs in a season. And that's why hitters probably can't wait to see these ballparks of the future because they just seem to get better looking all the time. -- Bob Brookover 5. It's the small strike zone! Make no mistake -- the incredibly shrinking strike zone has been a significant factor in baseball's great home run explosion. In the last decade, the high strike has virtually disappeared to the point where little above the belt is called a strike in either league. Given the choice of issuing one walk after another or delivering pitches across the heart of the plate, pitchers have reluctantly decided on the latter option. The results have been predictable. With a smaller portion of the strike zone to protect, batters can sit on more hittable pitches, then mash them when they arrive. Last spring, in an attempt to get umpires to revert to the more traditional strike zone, Major League Baseball sent out letters to umpires, reminding them of the parameters of the strike zone. This was taken as an affront by the umpires' union and proved to be a rallying cry for their ill-fated resignation strategy last July. It's not just the high strike that's been eliminated. Pitchers are also reluctant to throw inside. Any pitch that backs off a hitter can quickly lead to a staredown, retaliation or the kind of bench-clearing brawls that developed between the Tigers and White Sox last weekend. Hitters hang over the plate with impunity, extending their arms fully. The better hitters are able to turn on balls thrown on the inner half, while still able to drive pitches on the outer half of the plate to the opposite field. Perhaps Sandy Alderson's decision to integrate crews from both leagues, the infusion of younger umpires and baseball's decisive labor victory over the union will lead to uniformity and more accountability. But don't count on it happening overnight. As the first few weeks of the new season and new millennium suggest, homers are here to stay. -- Sean McAdam		ALSO SEE Stark: Home runs here to stay Off Base: Carnage out of control Users sound off on all the home runs