Happy Baseball Day (so the start time moved, we will adjust)! After a lockout that lasted more than three months, a delayed spring training and a delayed start of the regular season, baseball is finally here. This will be full season unlike any other since 1972, when both the American and National Leagues did not have the Designated Hitter. Yes, the DH is in the National League now, and it’s permanent (unlike the 2020 pandemic-shortened season).
I do not like the DH rule, and I never have. No, I’m not a traditionalist, in fact, I think the game has to innovate to re-generate fan interest. I’m not opposed to the “ghost runner”, I think it adds an element of strategy and excitement to extra innings. I really like the new schedule that we will see in 2023, in which every team will play every other team each year. And I like seven-inning games. The stakes are higher in every inning, and I think it makes the game more exciting (as well as two and one-half hours long, which it what it should be).
The DH is being employed for several reasons, some of which are reasonable. First, there has to be the same rules in both leagues to implement the new scheduling format. The DH helps prevent injuries to pitchers (see Jacob deGrom), and it may allow starting pitchers to pitch deeper into games.
However, there is an inherent beauty of nine players against nine players in baseball. Every player plays a position, and bats. The concept is elegant in its simplicity. Player removal decisions have to be carefully contemplated and timed. That conjures up the “strategy” word. For 50 years, AL fans would say that no one goes to the game to see strategy. I would say “nonsense”, the NL plays chess while the AL plays checkers. The NL games was always more interesting, at least to me.
The days of nine on nine are now gone. We have to accept it. Some (maybe many) will like it. In an article for ESPN.com, Tim Kurkjian recaps some of the moments that pitchers taking their swings have provided over the years, the likes of which we will never see again:
We will never see a pitcher hit two home runs on Opening Day, as Madison Bumgarner — the only pitcher ever to do that — did in 2017. Adrian Beltre hit 477 homers and Johnny Bench hit 389, but neither hit one on Opening Day; Bumgarner hit two on the same Opening Day.
We will never have a competition within a pitching staff like the one on the 2021 Brewers. Bench coach Pat Murphy bought a 4-foot-tall wooden statue that was awarded to any Brewers pitcher who drew a walk without swinging his bat. The honorary statue was placed in that pitcher’s locker until the next pitcher accomplished the feat. “It’s in my locker now,” said Brewers pitcher Adrian Houser proudly. “It’s very competitive. As soon as it happens, the statue is moved immediately. It might be in my locker forever.”
We will never see a pitcher hit like George Brett‘s older brother, Ken, who hit a home run in four consecutive starts, a major league record. George always liked to say that Ken was the best hitter in the family.
Indeed. In 2016, the overweight, underestimated, unforgettable Bartolo Colon, at age 42, became the oldest player ever to hit first major league home run, which featured one of the slowest, most joyous trips around the bases in baseball history, and it triggered one of the wildest dugout celebrations we have ever seen. “When we get back to the dugout, it’s just me and Bartolo; everyone else is down hiding in the tunnel,” said then-Mets catcher Kevin Plawecki, who was on base at the time of the home run. “I didn’t know what to do, bear hug him again? And then, everyone comes shooting out of the tunnel. It was unbelievable. Every guy on the team went over and gave him a big hug. It was absolutely nuts.”
It was nuts. It was magic. Now that magic is gone.
“I’m going to miss it,” said New York Mets pitcher Max Scherzer, who loves hitting and running the bases as much as any pitcher in the game. “It bothers me as much as it should bother me.”“I’m not going to miss it,” said Atlanta Braves pitcher Charlie Morton. “I don’t think anyone wants to watch me strike out on three pitches and walk back to the dugout 98 times out of a hundred.”
