Lets get rid of DH in the AL forever

The designated hitter is an infrequent issue, except to us purists who believe the thing ought to be buried in a shoebox along with interleague games and Coors Field’s Blake Street Burrito.

In alternate All-Star Games and at the World Series, the DH gets added attention, reminding all that the game is played unnaturally in one of the leagues.

Little did we realize that it was in the National League.

The DH is used during these artificial slap-downs between the leagues, such as the Rockies’ series with the White Sox and Indians.

This results in the oddity that Rockies pitchers did not have to hit there (Ryan Spilborghs and Scott Podsednik took the duty) and that Indians pitchers must hit here.

No real advantage for either league

There is no real advantage either way, since pushing a utility player into the DH spot for a National League team while the American League gets to keep its highly paid star in the lineup balances out the one or two at-bats of an American League pitcher.

It does provide a bit of fun when an AL manager contemplates the double switch late in a game, like watching a politician try to do algebra in his head.

Still, everyone merely lives with the situation, in place for the 35 years of the DH and 12 of interleague play, and no harm done.

Well, not exactly.

Not when a Steinbrenner is concerned and not when a New York Yankee is involved.

Things are always magnified in both of these cases, less so than when it was George Steinbrenner and not his son, Hank—- sort of George’s designated hitter — but when something happens in New York, the echoes are louder.

Earlier this year, a couple of bad calls by umpires in New York urged a new look at instant replay in baseball, and thus was a plan set in motion — to be tried in the calm and seclusion of the Arizona Fall League.

Yet, suddenly, the idea is fast-tracked to begin possibly by Aug. 1, in time to work the bugs out before the postseason.

Having already gone on record as being against instant replay in baseball, I will need to get a bigger shoebox.

The speed and urgency of implementing something that needs neither one sets off alarms about the DH because Steinbrenner the Younger wants the issue settled once and for all.

I am certainly all for that. The designated hitter phonies up the game. It is the wart on baseball’s nose — unsightly, unwelcome and unnatural. Even when it first began, it seemed, at the time, to give Carl Yastrzemski a couple of more years in the game.

Sure, get rid of it. Easy enough to do.

Fire all DHs; make them play

Fire all the DHs. Make them play in the field, give them something to do besides munch on the post-game cold cuts between at-bats and find new places to scratch.

Involve pitchers in each side of the game (including standing in the batter’s box after hitting an opponent with a pitch) and return the game in both leagues to where Steinbrenner mockingly places the National League, two centuries into the past.

Imagine that, accusing the one league that plays baseball as it was meant to be played, as it should be played, of doing it wrong.

(Just to give the DH one bit of current perspective. Let’s suppose during that very dramatic U.S. Open, Rocco Mediate was allowed a designated driver, something he could have used on the 91st hole, or Tiger Woods was allowed a designated driver, meaning one with a golf cart, because of the pain in his knee.)

Each player should play the game, the whole game, not just part of the game, not just the piece he is best at. Why not designated fielders and designated runners?

I think I’ve made my case. But now to why the Yankees want to corrupt the National League instead of purify the American by just getting rid of the DH.

It seems in Houston, a Yankees pitcher, maybe their best pitcher, Chien-Ming Wang, could not run from second base to home plate without hurting himself.

Tore some ligaments in his foot. Might be out for the rest of the year.

Now, if Wang, or any American League pitcher, were more used to running the bases, to playing baseball instead of being just the designated thrower, he might have been able to put one foot in front of the other.

Just as a Steinbrenner might one day be able to keep his foot out of his mouth.

XBernie Lincicome is a columnist for the Rocky Mountain News. Contact him at lincicomeb@rockymountainnews.com.