The last Commish For A Day comes from International Correspondent and foreign baseball connoisseur Ron Rollins, master of the site Baseball Over Here. This is more of a stream of consciousness...with a distinct left turn into the Land of the Disturbed.
Elimnate the DH, as it is an abomination to sports. (abomination = affront to the sensibilities of the human race)- There is no sitting out for substitutes at a crucial moment of the game.
- In the NFL, when the QB is about to get sacked, they don't stop the game and let someone else get tackled to avoid injury.
- In golf, they don't let the player do hit the tee shot, hit the drives and chips, and then have someone else come putt for him.
- In the decathalon, an athlete doesn't do 9 events and then get to pick someone to do the 10th because its his weakest.
- In life, a guy doesn't take a pretty woman to dinner, wine and dine her, get her all hot and bothered, and step aside and let some other guy complete the mission.
- No, in life, you have to do the entire job. You have to finish what you start, even if she doesn't.
So, no DH, eh Ron?
I'm not so anti-DH. In fact, I could even see an argument to expand it to the NL. Blasphemous, perhaps, but it might be better than having to watch some of these inept pitchers trying not to look like fools, or worse, trying not to get killed. Having lost Chien-Ming Wang for half the season due to an injury sustained while running the bases, I could live without seeing pitchers hit.
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8 comments:
In football, when a team is down by 2 points with 10 seconds left, they pull the quarterback and put in a kicker. In golf, I'm sure they started with one bent stick to hit all the shots, now they have specialized clubs for each type of shot. The decathalon is an event designed specifically to show that the athelete can perform in different areas, so your analogy doesn't hold. In basketball, they put in rebounders when they go on defense, then put in shooters to hit 3 ponters when they need to score points. In hockey, when things are getting chippy they put in the 4th line. And since you used one non-sports analogy, when John McClane drives a car into a helicopter, it's not Bruce Willis in the car. When a guy can't hit a baseball, put someone in who can.
Without a DH the pitcher needs to be a little bit better athlete. See Smoltz, Glavin, Maddux, Sabethia, Marquis. Why is that a bad thing? Why are the added runs scored by American League offenses considered a good thing? Is a 3-2 ball game a terrible thing to watch?
Some people think the constant electronic stimulus we're subjected to has made us an ADHD nation. The existence of the DH would be primary evidence that is the case.
The existence of the DH is primary evidence that after nearly 100 years of baseball the (AL) powers that were figured out that pitchers can't hit.
I've always prescribed to what anon said in the first comment. But I would be willing to change on one condition - there has to be an effort made to keep pitchers focused more on hitting in the lower levels. Not just going through the motions - but becoming viable hitters.
I'd love to see the statistical history of pitchers batting. Were they always this bad?
Ever heard of George Ruth? Or George Sisler? Or Rick Rhodern? Or Don Robinson? Or Ken Brett? Or Joaquin Andujar? Or Walr Terrell? Or Felix Hernandez? Or C.C. Sabathia? Or Micah Owings?
Do I need to go on?
The DH rule should be abolished just so that we can Oliver Perez hit...
Strategy be damned, sayeth Ron. Is there anything else interesting you'd like to remove from the game? Perhaps stolen bases?
There's no proof that there are more 3-2 games in the NL over the AL. According to Baseball Reference the NL avg 4.5 R/G and the AL 4.8 R/G last year.
Ron, you prove my point by naming 10 good hitting pitchers in the history of baseball. So, yeah you would need to go on to prove that there are enough good hitting pitchers for me to accept them all hitting.
TCM, here's the strategy that I would love to see go away. Runner on second, 2 outs, #8 hitter up. #8 hitter walked intentionally so that they can pitch to the pitcher.
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