That policy moderated with the passing years, but it was not until 1920 that league officials stipulated the use only of clean and new baseballs, both in an effort to enhance offense and as a concern for player safety (since worn and discolored balls frequently were hard to control or even see). Those directives lent a new measure of consistency to the game, so that the ball a batter swung at in the bottom of the …showed first 75 words of 443 total…

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