MLB: The designated hitter, the National League, and “traditionalism”
By Jeff Kallman
MLB may institute a universal designated hitter in 2021. Traditionalists howl. Flash: The NL isn’t allergic to busting tradition.
Allow me to be a big stinker for a few moments and present you a slash line from the 2019 MLB season. The slash line is .128/.159/.163. Its owner also hit 25 home runs last year. Can you guess the owner’s identity?
If you guessed the Son of Rob Deer, you have a delightfully wicked sense of humor. (And, you’re only .092/.165/.279 short in the slash line and seven per 162 games short in the home runs.) But if you guessed that that was the cumulative slash line of MLB pitchers batting last year, you win the Noble Prize for Extinguished Achievement.
What brings this on? “There is a growing belief amongst NL GM’s that the DH will be instituted for NL as early as 2021. FWIW.” Thus tweeted former major league general manager Jim Bowden on Monday. Causing no small social media hoopla, along the usual lines whenever the topic is raised, one line variations on the apocalypse’s pending arrival and the other variations on what-took-them-so-long.
To the stubborn traditionalist, Bowden was as good as saying the Huns are coming. To the not-so-stubborn soul, it’s anything but. Especially when he or she goes forth from the aforementioned cumulative slash line and isolates that of National League pitchers last year: .131/.162/.166. Those 25 home runs mentioned earlier, by the way, were hit entirely by National League pitchers, too.
Be honest. If you saw a slash line like that attached to any MLB player other than a pitcher, you’d wonder aloud who was asleep at the switch when he was promoted even to a September call-up, never mind if he was taken north out of spring training to start a season. That type of non-pitcher had better have a skill other than periodic home runs to justify blocking another player who’s turned the highest minors into his personal batting practice machine.
Yes, it’s been a periodic thrill to see Madison Bumgarner send a pair over the fences on one fine Opening Day. Yes, it was a delightful riot to watch ancient and (shall we say) portly Bartolo Colon hit his first and only major league home run—in his 226th career at-bat, during his twentieth major league season, at age 43, and resembling a cement truck with flat inner rear tires as he ran it out.
Asking whether a couple of guys bringing down the house a couple of times a year is worth a season and maybe a postseason’s worth of a wasted lineup spot is a fair question. It’s not a question I ask lightly. I spent years fuming against the designated hitter myself, succumbing readily to the two arguments usually deployed against it: tradition and strategy.
But at long enough last, I understand that both stand on particularly shaky territory. Tradition shouldn’t be dismissed without cause, but here’s a bulletin: The National League has never been allergic to disposing of tradition.
The American League introduced the designated hitter in 1973. Seven years earlier, tradition took a dive on a National League field, when the Houston Astros introduced first indoor baseball (the Astrodome, which Yankee-turned-Astro Joe Pepitone dubbed “the world’s biggest hair dryer” when he first saw the joint) and then rug ball (installed when the specially-bred grass proved unsustainable). In due course rug ball scattered around both leagues but yes, the National League started it. The howling traditionalists decrying the designated hitter forgot that one.
Once upon a time, too, tradition also included that no non-white player was to be allowed into MLB and its minor league affiliations. I’m reasonably certain that the “traditionalists” now demanding the designated hitter be kept from (one of their words) poisoning the National League would not wish to see that disgraceful tradition restored. Did I mention it was a National League team breaking that tradition first, with a Brooklyn Dodger infielder named Jackie Robinson?
Time was when the batting helmet was anything but a tradition, with scattered experiments and no mandates even for safety, until—you guessed it—a National League team just had to get cute. The ever forward-thinking Branch Rickey mandated batting helmets for his Pittsburgh Pirate hitters starting in 1953. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) entirely foolproof, never mind the changes it’s undergone in the decades since, but it’s been a blessing. Especially if you have to stand in at the plate against a pitcher who can throw at three-figure speeds but whose GPS is out of tune.