On this day 35 years ago, the American League adopted the Designated Hitter.

As a baseball fan, I can't begin to tell you how much I loathe the concept of the DH. The next commissioner should dump it post-haste. Any presidential candidate promising to back a Constitutional amendment banning it permanently has my vote in November. I'm considering naming my firstborn James Gillespie The-Designated-Hitter-Sucks Gilmore VI. (I'm keeping the VI despite the minor cosmetic change in the name.)

Why does the DH suck? Here are three reasons.

• Managers no longer have to manage. It's the bottom of the 6th and the number 8 man gets aboard, but your pitcher's throwing a gem and you're tied 0-0. Do you put in a pinch hitter, or keep the pitcher in? If you're a bench player in the AL, you basically don't play; in the NL, you have to be ready in case of the double switch.
• DH's don't have to be good baseball players, just good hitters. Imagine if Babe Ruth, after he was no longer even able to patrol the outfield, had gotten to slip into a role where all he had to do was hit and never had to put on a glove. He'd have hit a hell of a lot more than 714 dingers. A designated hitter isn't a ballplayer; he's a hitter. This is counter to the whole concept of baseball.
• The DH gives a competitive advantage to the American League. National League teams don't carry an additional fake-ballplayer who can beat the hell out of the ball but doesn't play in the field; to do so would be shortchanging their teams in the 154 or so games a season where the DH didn't come into play. Thus, when they meet in the World Series, the AL team has one more good bat than the NL team, because they've collectively decided to carry one non-ballplayer on each team.

The DH is bad for true baseball. This is a sad anniversary; 35 years ago, real baseball in the American League died. Let us pray that the National League stays true to the game Ruth, DiMaggio, and Williams played and never makes the AL's mistakes, and that we finally get a commissioner who puts the good of the game ahead of the supposed money advantage from the DH and gets rid of it once and for all.

Labels: Baseball, Designated Hitter