When was Baseball's Golden Age?

It's almost Baseball season (no preseason doesn't count) and don't give me that nostalgia of Pitchers & Catchers reporting as being the start of the season, that's just a throwback to the earlier times when ball players had jobs and didn't work out in the off-season.

In the Star Trek: DS9 universe Capitan Benjamin Sisko loves baseball and his favorite player is a Japanese born shortstop "Buck Bokai", who breaks Joe DiMaggio's immortal 57 game hitting streak, in 2026, but by the 2040's baseball's steep decline in popularity leads to the sports demise.

Nowadays with the massive amounts of money floating around Baseball and the valuation of the Yankees $6 Billion and the Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs at $4 Billion it seems far-fetched to imagine baseball disappearing in 20 years.  But, back when DS9 was on the air, baseball still hadn't recovered from the destructive 1994 strike and the 1998 Home Run chase by Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire was still a few years off, it seemed possible baseball might end.

So, in the DS9 universe the baseball of the 21st century was the Golden Era as it encompassed the actual Earth with the Planetary League replacing the Major Leagues but, when was Baseball Golden Age here in the semi-real world?

Tangentially, one of the ideas that baseball trainers and managers believed back in the day was for ballplayers not to lift weights because it will make them "muscle-bound".  Well, despite the now universal belief that weight-lifting is the best thing you can do for your body I sincerely hope teams and players are re-evaluating the idea that getting jacked is an unqualified benefit for ball players.

Last season, White Sox pitcher Lucas Giolito decided to become the latest Chicago player to bulk up and he pitched terribly, now new Cubs player from Japan Seiya Suzuki decided he needed more muscle to make it through the grueling MLB season, but his added muscle mass appears to have led to an oblique strain which is apparently serious enough to keep him out of the World Baseball Classic and the foreseeable future for the 2023 Season.

After some consideration I decided a 25 year era bracketed by the bench mark years of 1947 (Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier) to 1972 (Roberto Clemente's untimely death) as a good representation of the best of baseball.

Anything prior to World War 1 can almost be considered a different game and even all the way up to the 1927 Yankees with Murderer's Row can be considered the Stone Age.  The interwar years showcase the greatness of Baseball as a game heard on Radio but, can't really be called a Golden Age due to segregation, training, and equipment.

So, in considering 1947-1972, we get a lot of all-time greats; Stan Musial, Sandy Koufax, Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, Bob Gibson, Ernie Banks, Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, Carl Yastrzemski to name just the greatest.  You also have the great westward expansion as the Giants and Dodgers move to California, plus Kansas City gets the A's then the Royals, and the Senators keep getting eliminated first as the Minnesota Twins, then as the Rangers asTexas gets a couple teams.  So, Baseball had become a nationwide sport. 

It's also before the horrible round multi-use stadiums of the 1970's, or the home run happy Steroid Era, and the Moneyball stupidity of maximizing every at-bat leading to the bore-a-thon 3 True Outcome Era and 3-4 hour games.

And no a strikeout is not the same as any other out, and no the shift isn't bad for baseball, and no walks are not just as good as hits, and no home runs are not the most exciting thing in sports.

Baseball has finally recognized this and adopted a raft of changes for the 2023 season but, is it too late to arrest the current perception of baseball being a boring game? 

Play Ball...