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In DC Comics’ Justice League of America #119 (June 1975), by Elliot Magin and Dick Dillin, Hawkgirl is revealed to be suffering from a lab-engineered disease called the Equalizer Plague. The germ robs each sufferer of their individual traits and skills and thereby reduces entire populations to a homogenous, mediocre average.
It’s intriguing, as well as a little bit frightening, to realize that while this would have meant a decline in abilities for half the population the other half would have experienced a marked improvement. Yet, it is understood, at least within the world of super-hero comics, that an afflicted society isn’t going to advance very much if everyone and everything in it is just the same beige shade of meh. The Plague is something to be resisted and cured.
Such a world would also be boring as hell. Baseball fans would seem well-positioned to grasp the risks of an Equalizer Plague.
It has been a dozen years since the major-league season ended without either a 100-game winner or a 100-game loser in a full season. In 2014 the Angels, in their final playoff season to date, topped the American League at 98 wins. The Nationals, with a dominating pitching staff and a version of Anthony Rendon who was still into it, led the National League with 96. Turn the telescope around and you can barely perceive the Rangers with 95 losses and the Diamondbacks with 98. These were unremarkable teams in an unremarkable season, and it was fitting that the World Series between the Royals and the Giants was a matchup of Wild Card teams. The Series even went seven games, with the seventh decided by one run, as if no one was quite capable of declaring themselves the winner.
