June 24th marked the end of interleague play for the 2012 season and will mark the last year that interleague play will occur in its traditional format during the season. The changes for interleague play in 2013 and the seasons to come have reopened the debate around the use of the designated hitter and how “America’s Favorite Pastime” continues to be played under two different sets of rules.
When interleague play was first introduced in 1998, it was a novel concept aimed at increasing ticket sales. For the first time in MLB history, National League and American League teams would play each other during the regular season. This offered fans an opportunity to see star players from the rival Circuit, and to watch teams which had never before visited their team’s home park.
The dark side of interleague play was that it created matchups which dared to reach historic levels of irrelevance. Many readers will no doubt recall that memorable June 2006 series when the Royals swept the Pirates in a three-game home stand. What about Cleveland taking 2 of 3 games in a 2008 weekend set against the Padres, backed by Jamey Carroll’s dominating 5-for-12 performance at the plate? Finally, who can forget Oakland’s Gio Gonzalez outduelling the Marlins’ Javy Vazquez with 8 innings of one-hit, shutout pitching on June 28, 2011? The 12,124 fans who came to the Coliseum that night certainly won’t.
The primary complaint leveled against interleague play is actually just as ridiculous as the Legends of Interleague highlighted in the preceding paragraph: “Interleague is unfair because it forces AL pitchers to bat in NL parks”. The argument is that because AL pitchers are even worse hitters and baserunners than their NL counterparts, AL teams are at a tremendous disadvantage in NL parks. AL teams are also “disadvantaged” when playing NL rules because they have to bench their designated hitter or else risk putting them in the field. My response to this rubbish is that AL pitchers are free to practice hitting and running whenever they like, just like their NL counterparts do. And heaven forbid if a designated hitter has to take 20 minutes out of his precious batting practice sessions to field a few groundballs!
I, for one, despise the designated hitter rule and the generations of sissy pitchers (and fans) it has spawned. Having a player designated to hit for another player is the sporting equivalent of having your mom wash your laundry for you. Requiring the pitcher to bat adds far more dynamics to the game. Managers have to employ more hit and runs and sacrifices to squeeze more offense out of their lineup. Pitchers who throw at hitters face the prospect of being thrown at when they come to bat. Teams are forced to use more bench players as pinch hitters, and team managers must use creative strategies to work around the necessity of having their pitcher bat (including the vastly underrated double-switch). But perhaps the greatest effect of not using the designated hitter is that hitters who cannot field a position on the diamond are rightfully relegated to nothing more than pinch hitters.
Baseball was one of the few team sports which required every player to play both offense and defense. And that is the way the game has always been played in the oldest organized league in baseball, the National League. However, in 1973, the American League broke ranks with the Senior Circuit and introduced the designated hitter as a way of creating more offense, with the hope of selling more tickets.
Because the Junior Circuit continues to employ the designated hitter, players who can’t catch or throw, two of the most fundamental skills in baseball, have been able to forge long and productive careers. It’s hard to argue that Edgar Martinez or David Ortiz should be in the Hall of Fame when they didn’t own a glove for most of their careers, and could conserve more energy over the course of a season because they didn’t have to endure the rigours of standing in the field in sweltering heat or playing a defensive position every day.
This brings us back to 2013. Up to this season, interleague play typically occurred during one or two blocks of consecutive weeks prior the All Star Break. Because the Houston Astros are moving from the NL Central to the AL West in 2013, each league will now have 15 teams. This means that, on any given night, one team from each league will not have a game against an opponent from the same league, and there will be an interleague game nearly every night for the entire season. Interleague games will become just another part of the weekly schedule and, gasp, may even decide pennant races! I can’t wait to see the Yankees eliminated from playoff contention when C.C. Sabathia sprains an ankle trying to leg out a single against the Rockies.
MLB has tried to create a balanced schedule (another common complaint about interleague), by having each team in a division play the same teams from the rival Circuit during interleague play, save for one series against special designated rival teams. The designated hitter crowd is already howling for MLB to permanently implement the designated hitter in the National League to create a uniform set of rules and level the playing field for AL teams. Enforcing NL rules in NL parks appears to be the greatest inequality the game has seen since the introduction of the curveball in the late 19th century. What’s next, a designated runner for the slow guy on the team? I am actually hoping that MLB restores the AL to pre-1973 rules and forces the pitchers to hit again and the designated hitters to field a position or else grab a spot on the bench. If this happens, I will personally purchase a glove for David Ortiz so that he can continue his great career.
Lost amid all this nonsense is the fact that from the 19th century to 1973, all pitchers were expected to hit, and some even enjoyed it and were very good at it. Babe Ruth actually started his career as a pitcher with the Red Sox, and only moved to the outfield in order to get at bats on days when he wasn’t pitching. I’m not saying that abolishing the designated hitter will lead to the discovery of the next Babe Ruth, but it will mean that baseball will be played under one set of the rules, the rules by which it was always meant to be played.
…and that’s the Last Word.
