The Designated Hitter: The Bane of Baseball. I like it.

The Colorado Rockies swept their way into the World Series with impressive playoff wins against the Diamondbacks and the Phillies. They finished the season at 90-73, a half game behind the D-backs in their division, but they won 20 of their last 21 games, won a Wild Card playoff spot, and ran like a buzz saw into the World Series against the Boston Red Sox, who had struggled for the last month of the season, had given up a big lead against the Yankees before sealing the deal, and then had fallen behind the Indians three games to one before turning on the afterburners and winning the last three games to win the American League pennant and earn a shot against the red-hot Rockies.

The Sox clobbered the Rockies 13-1 in the first game.

Now anything can happen, and it will be fun to watch these two teams play each other until one has won four of seven, but increasingly the World Series is less a world championship showdown than it is a shadow of what it once was. The country at large still loves to preserve the nostalgic notion that the World Series determines the best team in baseball, but it doesn't, not any more. And the reason, of course, is the presence of a Designated Hitter in the American League, which skews all the won-lost records, all a team's roster decisions, all the balance between offense, defense, speed, and pitching. The AL simply plays a different game from the NL.

I used to live in the New York area and rooted for a long time for the Mets in the National League. Years earlier, before the DH got to the American League in 1973, I rooted for the Casey Stengel Yankees. Now, however, I live in the Tampa Bay area and have adopted as my team the Rays, the perennial doormats of the American League East. During this past year, I learned two things that surprised me. First is that it is more fun rooting for the small-market Rays than it ever was rooting for the Big Market Mets or Yankees.   And the second, most surprising, thing is that it was fun rooting for a team with a DH.

American League offenses just keep coming at you. There's no relief in sight when you look at their lineups. Soft-hitting pitchers, for example, don't get to the plate in the AL. Because the National League pitchers hit, there is also a greater need for pinch hitters, another dynamic that makes the leagues different. And with pitchers hitting, there is more sacrifice bunting in the NL. The presence of an offensive weapon who never takes the field, also makes AL teams more likely to have good defenses. That is, they don't have to put a poor-fielding player on the field just to get his bat in the lineup. The AL doesn't have to manufacture runs as much as the NL either. And American League managers don't have to pull their starters for a pinch hitter in the middle of a rally. Finally, the famous National League "double switch," designed to get a position player to hit in the lineup before the pitcher is due up, is also unnecessary in the AL.

So the AL plays a more simplified, less strategized game that barely resembles real baseball at all. But it is fun to watch.  Despite more frequent pitching changes, the games seem quicker, more action dominated, less boring, than NL games. For the first time in my lifelong love of baseball, I can see why the American League, with its DH diminishment, is attractive to fans. I like it too.

But pitting a team with the DH against a team without one, is a travesty.  I've known this for years, of course, because the purists have made the point often and loudly over the years.  But watching the first game of the 2007 World Series, watching the Red Sox and their offensive juggernaut rout the Rockies, brings the entire issue back to light once again. It does not even the playing field to use the DH in AL parks and no DH in NL parks. Entire rosters are built on the basis of having your pitcher come to bat four times a game--or having a DH come up four times a game.  The Rockies are not worse than the Red Sox, they are just not playing the same game. The only way to ever again make the World Series be a real world championship is to have both leagues play under the same rules.  

I never thought I’d say this, but the solution is to bring the DH to the National League.  It’s really that simple.   

 

Addendum:  The Red Sox swept the Rockies, 4-0.