laklak wrote:1957, Wilson develops the A2000 wide-webbed fielder's glove, which eventually becomes MLB's official glove. There's your World Series tie-in.

Every now and again, a truly great athlete shatters all previous assumptions about what’s possible to achieve in a sport. When this happens, opposing teams scramble to find ways to stop them or slow them down. In basketball, teams tried to to stop Shaquille O’Neal by immediately fouling him (the “hack-a-shaq” strategy); in soccer opposing teams continuously foul the great Argentinean player, Leo Messi, before he can dribble through the defense.

But in baseball, the solution for stopping the greatest hitter of all time was to actually redesign the game itself. And it started in the 1940s with Ted Williams.