Major League Baseball needs to face reality. It’s time to deaden the baseball. Not to create a second Dead Ball Era. Just to get back to normal.



The way home runs are flying, they’re losing their meaning, their relevance, their ability to connect the game of today with the game of yesterday. And if you ruin the home-run records, you’re risking major damage to the sport. We know this because it happened, not so long ago.



Know why I hated the Steroid Era? It wasn’t just the cheating, the creation of uneven playing fields between those who used and those who did not. It also was the warping of statistics, the distortion of generational comparisons fans and reporters cherish, even though they rarely were apples-to-apples to begin with.



Well, here we are again.



Not with a fresh influx of performance-enhancing drugs, though some players almost certainly are using them, even with stricter testing. No, the sport’s continuing...