The 2021 Major League Baseball season wasn’t that long ago, was it?
The world was still newly viral, yet felt slightly more open than it had been during the truncated 2020 season at the hands of COVID. Somewhere out of the blue came a pair of Cincinnati Reds to steal the stage around here, one after years of scuffling and another after a year of being almost completely invisible.
Joey Votto’s late-2020 swing change paid off in spades, and his 2021 campaign was one part throwback and another part revolutionary. His approach changed, he eschewed some of his previously unprecedented strike zone management, and began swinging at balls as if he were in charge of penalizing all non-penitent men who tried to pass.