The next outbreak came with integration. Jackie Robinson finished lower than third in H.B.P. only once in his first eight seasons.

In 1951, five of the eight most bruised batters were African-American or Latino, including Robinson, Minnie Minoso and Monte Irvin. Team averages climbed to 30 in 1952 from 20 in 1947.

The annual team averages stabilized in the range of 30 to 32 H.B.P., then climbed to the upper 30s in the 1960s with the 162-game schedule. But in the early 1970s, pitchers, perhaps emboldened by declining home run numbers, stopped pitching inside. Team hit-batter averages dropped to the low 30s and even the 20s by the 1980s. This encouraged hitters, and power numbers started climbing in the mid-1980s, and H.B.P. totals also began inching up.

Everything changed in the next decade. Teams averaged 33 H.B.P. in 1990, but three years later, the average rose to 43, surpassing 40 for the first time since 1916. Then the battle for the inside corner really turned fierce. By 1996, teams averaged 50 shots to the body. From 2001 to 2006, teams averaged 61 hit batters a year.

One factor in the increase was a shift in the strike zone, said the Fox Sports analyst Eric Karros, a major league first baseman from 1991 to 2004.

“As the umpires expanded the strike zone side to side, you had to put yourself in harm’s way to hit the pitch off the outside corner that was being called a strike,” he said.

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Hitters felt less fear, however, because of the advent of lighter and more flexible body armor. “There were more guys wearing protection on their elbows, wrists and forearms,” said Fernando Vina, an infielder for 12 years, who did not wear armor. Vina ranks 10th in career H.B.P. among players since 1900. (In junior college, he learned how to roll into a tight pitch to ease the impact.)

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Don Baylor, who is second to Craig Biggio in modern-day H.B.P., said the more-protected batters crowded the plate and dived into pitches.

“If I had armor, I’d have been hit 400 times,” instead of 267, said Baylor, now a coach for Colorado.

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The Kansas City catcher Jason Kendall, whose 248 H.B.P. ranks third among players since 1900, said pitchers today throw fewer brushback pitches than Don Drysdale or Bob Gibson. But with more relief specialists marching into the game, he said, “each has to establish the inside part of the plate, and to do that, you have to move people’s feet.”

Most significant was the artificially enhanced power surge. To prevent batters from extending their arms and launching moon shots, pitchers came inside with a vengeance.

“You were just trying to survive,” said Orel Hershiser, who hit more than 11 batters a year from 1996 to 2000, more than double his average from 1984 to 1988.

Hershiser, now an ESPN analyst, said pitchers traditionally worked outside because mistakes inside usually equaled a double or homer. But once players became so strong that “the outside mistake was of equal value” because beefed-up hitters could flick it over the fence, “people started pitching to both sides of the plate equally.”

Although many beanballs were not intentional, he said, “I’d think, I am really mad that this guy is so strong, so I am just going to bury the ball inside.” With guys crowding the plate — and so armored they would stay in longer — chances increased for an H.B.P.

Since 2006, however, the trend has reversed — with H.B.P. per team dropping 13 percent, to 59, then 56, then 53 last year. The shift mirrors the supposed decline in steroid use and home runs.

“Pitchers feel they can pitch away again now,” Baylor said.

Hershiser agreed and added that “when they come inside, they know hitters are not as strong, so they don’t have to go as far inside and are less likely to hit the batter.”

The numbers may fall back to the 1990s levels, but Hershiser said only a change in the strike zone would reduce the H.B.P. averages to their historical norms.

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“I don’t think it will go back all the way unless the high part of the strike zone goes back,” he said. “If you can’t throw a letter-high fastball down the middle for a strike, then you have to deal with the width of the plate. And that means pitching inside.”