The designated hitter:
"Sure! Who the hell wants to watch guys with no bat skills trying to hit?"
or
"No way! It just allows old guys with no fielding skills to stick around and allows managers to not play 'small ball'."
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
2 comments:
I have two problems with the designated hitter.
1) On the playground, you'd never get away with letting your weakest hitter skip his turn. It's just fundamentally unfair. Baseball is, at heart, still a playground game. That's what I love about it.
2) The fact that pitchers generally can't hit makes the later innings much more strategic in the NL. Your pitcher is in a groove, but the game is close and his spot in the batting order is coming up. So you have hard choices to make between great defence and great offense. Sometimes you get double switches and other complicated substititions, all based on batting order calculus. I find AL games boring by comparison.
I live in an AL city now, but I still watch the Cubs...
I have always hated the DH. It's over-specialization, and it makes pitchers wimps. Y'know, there WERE some decent-hitting pitchers in the day, like Don Drysdale, who occasionally was a pinch hitter.
Mary's 2nd point resonates.
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