There’s certainly a change in hot air, but it’s the hot air coming out of this guy’s mouth.
F.P. Santangelo, an announcer for the Washington Nationals, bizarrely attributed a spike in home run totals this season to a variety of reasons, most notably global warming.
It’s been fairly well-documented that launch angles, a rise in batters swinging for the fences and accepting the associated strikeouts that come with such actions, and a change in baseballs, have contributed to the astronomical numbers.
Sluggers and role-players alike are setting new career marks with their power surges.
“Two seasons after baseball smashed an MLB-record 6,105 home runs,” ESPN reports, “we’re on pace to shatter that mark in 2019.”
Santangelo’s reasoning is curious.
“I think the bats, plus the balls, plus launch angles, plus pitchers throwing hard, plus global warming is why there’s so many home runs,” he said having just witnessed a towering drive by White Sox rookie left fielder, Eloy Jimenez.
Wha?!
Study Says It’s the Ball
Players, pitchers especially, typically attribute home run surges to a ‘juiced’ baseball.
Scientists from USC and Kent State examined baseballs in 2018 and found that a slightly lighter and less dense core, combined with other small changes to the manufacturing of the ball, have helped inflate numbers.
MLB explains that the balls were still produced within their specs and nothing has been changed intentionally, but that study and previous research suggests that minuscule variations have led to these numbers spiking.
Not the First to Suggest Global Warming
Santangelo isn’t the first prominent announcer to suggest home runs are a result of global warming.
Tim McCarver and Joe Buck discussed the possibility of ‘thinner air’ being the culprit back in 2012.
“The air is thinning,” McCarver said. “There have been climatic changes over the last 50 years … I think that’s one of the reasons balls are carrying much better now.”
“So that’s your ‘inconvenient truth’ about it?” Buck responded, referencing the Al Gore propaganda film.
“You’re going to find it out one of these days, yes,” McCarver claimed.
VIDEO: Tim McCarver blames global warming for MLB’s increase in home runs http://t.co/cmy4j34Y
— Deadspin (@Deadspin) April 28, 2012
Sure, it wasn’t steroid use during that period nearly a decade ago and longer that contributed at all.
The conspiracy theory that global warming is affecting baseball scores is almost as rich as the MLB theory that a Chicago Cubs fan flashed a ‘white power symbol‘ during a recent broadcast.
Let’s hope MLB learns a lesson from ESPN and keeps these idiotic political messages off of their broadcasts.
