I have to disagree with the author's premise. The home run is boring in its current form. When it was a relatively rare sight it was more exciting and impactful

I have to disagree with the author's premise. The home run is boring in its current form. When it was a relatively rare sight it was more exciting and impactful. Because the home run is so much more prevalent (and other reasons of course) the truly exciting stuff is nearly gone. You don't see trick/special plays nearly as often anymore. When home run hitters are up every other batter, whats the point of risking stealing third base? There are less bunts, squeeze plays, pickles. Its the risks and the payoff (or lack thereof) that makes baseball games fun to watch (and to play, to be frank). You end up with boring, high scoring games like 11-6, 10-2, etc depending on which team's home run hitters got streaky that game. The NHL had a similar problem in the past where scores were creeping way up and it wasn't uncommon to see things like 7-3, 6-1 kind of blowouts. Those are exciting if they are rare occurences but if they are regular it makes the game boring. A 2-1, 3-2 game is far more exciting in hockey. The NHL has made changes to curtail (and encourage) high scoring games and waffle back and forth on which they think is better, but its not really clear that baseball can really do the same without fundamentally changing the game itself or rebuilding stadiums to have a much larger minimum outfield wall distance.