Great DH Debate : Best Argument for Keeping It, Is the Hitters

To talk about the designated hitter, first you meet Mr. DH.

Hal McRae puts on his glove--his batting glove, not a fielder’s glove, of course--and steps into the cage.

He looks like an ancient, arthritic man, all of whose joints hurt. Is that a bat or a cane he’s got? He’s so old that he has a son playing in Class A ball, a son who wasn’t even born until three years after the father began breaking bones as a pro.

Nearly 20 years ago, when McRae broke his leg in four places sliding into home plate--well, trying to break a catcher’s leg in about eight places would be more accurate--everybody said that here was a fellow destined for a short and unhappy career. He seemed to have declared war on large objects. Fences especially. Bad mischief befell him in the outfield.

Then, in 1973, he was traded from the National League’s Cincinnati Reds to the American League’s Kansas City Royals, and the American League adopted the designated hitter rule. Suddenly, baseball went from nine men on a side, as it had been for 104 years, to 10 on a team.

Talk about a fellow being at the right place at the right time. Now, more than 5,200 DH at-bats later, McRae, 40, can look back on one of those rare careers that includes 2,000 hits, 1,000 RBIs, eight trips to the playoffs and four to the World Series. He even had a season with 133 RBIs.

“I don’t think I’ll be around long enough to play in the same lineup with my son, although Brian’s hitting .280,” said the elder McRae, laughing. “But with the DH, you never can tell.”

The rule made him a star.

And in turn he personified the concept: A clutch-hitting, instant-offense player who would have been a danger to himself and others on defense.

The rule hasn’t transformed any other careers to such a radical degree. But it has altered a legion of lives.

Many distinguished careers have been extended. Frank Robinson, Tony Oliva, Orlando Cepeda, Al Kaline, Hank Aaron, Billy Williams, Harmon Killebrew, Lee May, Rusty Staub, Carl Yastrzemski, Al Oliver, Greg Luzinski, Roy White, Tommy Davis, Rico Carty, Willie Horton, Bobby Murcer, Andre Thornton, Darrell Evans, Ken Singleton, Reggie Jackson, Ted Simmons, Dave Kingman, Don Baylor and Gorman Thomas all have ended--or are ending--their careers as full-time DHs after surviving (or prospering) on defense for years.

That list, in itself, may be the best argument for the rule. Think of the fans those household names drew, the records they set and the games they won after they might otherwise have been retired or playing part time. And think of the innate edge the NL gives away in star appeal, especially now that the AL may have become the more charismatic league.

Although it’s seldom noticed, several promising careers have been more smoothly begun, thanks to the DH option. Eddie Murray, Jim Rice, Cecil Cooper and Kirk Gibson, for example, all were their team’s most-used DHs before they were entrusted with a position. All have become defensive pluses.

In fact, in 13 years no stellar player has broken in as a DH and failed to find a defensive slot. That undermines one frequent argument against the DH--that it would create a generation of freak stars who were not athletic enough to survive on defense. If some current kid DH, such as Larry Sheets, never moves to the field regularly, he’ll be unique.

Finally, plenty of marginal careers have been expanded. DH has been a sanctuary for a hundred and one in-between players such as Oscar Gamble, Carlos May, Pat Kelly, Cliff Johnson, Jose Morales and Mike Easler who never made an all-star team or felt secure in their jobs, but who made names, of a sort, as DHs.

Ironically, almost no one except McRae ever has wanted to be known and remembered as a DH. It’s almost a badge of dishonor, the adult equivalent of the child who’s chosen and then exiled to right field.

When it comes to image, nobody in baseball gets it in the neck worse than a DH. For every Horton or Gates Brown who looked like he’s been held hostage in a Baskin Robbins and tortured with peanut-butter-double-fudge-ripple for weeks, there have been dozens of Tommy Harpers and Cesar Tovars who could hustle first to third very nicely, thanks.

For years Singleton shagged flies daily, as he always had, even after Manager Earl Weaver made him a DH. He just couldn’t stand the clubhouse stigma of not owning a glove. Baylor and White raged against the job description, although Baylor’s arm was so badly hurt he could barely throw the ball back to the infield and White was known as the Venus de Milo of outfielders-no arm at all.

Managers even fear that they might offend stars by writing them down at DH without permission. Weaver has sent out feelers to see if Fred Lynn, the Gold Glove center fielder, might, pretty please, consider being a DH from time to time, or would that be a problem? “I just get the feeling Freddie isn’t enthusiastic about DH,” said Weaver.

It’s odd that such an important milestone in baseball history should get so little respect. The radical rule may have changed baseball more fundamentally than any other single factor since the lively ball in 1920.

Most important, the rule ended an era of American League lethargy, caused by an almost terminal lack of hitting. In 1972, the average team hit .239 and scored a paltry 535 runs a season.

By 1973, that had jumped to .259 and nearly 700 runs a season. For the last nine years, the AL has enjoyed an almost perfect statistical balance of pitching and hitting, with the league average always in the .260s and the league scoring about 725 runs per team. Nine runs a game; just right.

A rabbit ball and tightened strike zone may have effected the trend, but without the DH, the AL probably would not have prospered and revived as it has.

Side effects of the rule have fascinated everyone in the game and provided continuing surprise.

For example, a whole generation of AL pitchers has been asked to work more innings. And plenty of them paid a price--often called “DH burnout”--in terms of tired or injured arms. AL pitchers have it tough. Fewer strikeouts. No breeze innings. No stress letup. As a concession, almost all teams now use five-man rotations and no longer have a machismo fixation with complete games. Going seven or eight innings in the AL may be as tough as nine once were.

Gradually, teams have discovered that two new spots have grown in stature in the batting order. The No. 2 spot can accommodate a 20-home-run man with 90 RBI potential because he now sees far more runners on base than in the old days.

Also, the No. 9 hitter often is referred to now as the “second leadoff man.” He should have speed and a decent on-base percentage. The last batter is now frequently a better hitter than the next-to-last man.

Because the DH has reduced the need for pinch-hitters, the 24-man roster was a natural outgrowth. Few miss the lost man. Also, a manager these days can save his two or three best pinch-hitters and use them in one late-inning wave to try to counteract a star relief pitcher. Hold back a couple of good lefty bats to answer a Don Aase. Keep the gun loaded for your one big shot.

Because it has brought such fundamental changes, the DH also has caused more ceaseless controversy--acrimony that shows no hint of abating or of being resolved--than any other baseball topic over the past 13 years.

Nothing has proved more fruitless than debating whether the DH should exist in one league, two or none. Yet the issue is so basic that it never will go away or lose its capacity to raise the ire, until both leagues once more play the same game.

Bartlett A. Giamatti, the former president of Yale who will become National League president at the end of the season, says he will oppose any DH creepage into his new domain. The thing offends his purist bloodlines.

At the same time, second-year Commissioner Peter V. Ueberroth decreed unilaterally last fall that henceforth the DH will be a part of every World Series. Fie on this preposterous tradition of using AL rules in even-numbered years and NL rules in the odd seasons.

He even commissioned a poll of fans. Many thought that the survey’s main purpose was to reach a DH consensus, preferably a pro-DH result since hitting means runs and runs mean excitement and that means money and money in everybody’s pocket makes a commissioner’s life one sweet song.

Instead, the whole affair turned into one silly beer commercial argument. Tastes great; less filling yourself.

AL fans, indoctrinated and inured to the sight of fat men, old men, lame men and awkward men trudging to the plate with war clubs, loved the rule, nearly 2 to 1.

To them, it meant big rallies, more home runs, less sleepy innings with a weak-hitting pitcher contaminating the proceedings and more complete games by star drawing-card pitchers who did not have to be pinch-hit for in the late innings of masterful duels.

NL fans, taught to love speed and strategy, and, perhaps, loath to believe that they had been missing out on a good thing for so many years, were just as opposed to the DH as AL followers were staunch in defending it. Add up the votes and the whole thing was a wash.

The conventional interpretation of these data (and a similar Sports Illustrated poll) is that baseball is simply stuck with the old predicament. Two leagues, separate but very unequal.

Couldn’t it also be argued that these fan studies are really quite conclusive, and that the debate should now be at an end? Isn’t it overwhelmingly probable that a league that adopts the DH rule will, within a few years, have a strong consensus behind the change, as the AL now does? Why not put the DH in the NL and wait?

What seems incontestable is that the DH, at least in the AL, is a fixture.

“I hated that rule when it first came in,” said Milwaukee Brewers Manager George Bamberger, who has managed and coached in both leagues. “Now, I love it. And I’d say that if I was back in the other league. The scoring is exciting, sure. But the only real argument against the DH is that it decreases strategy. And I think that’s completely wrong.

“As a manager, I’d say it increases the difficult decisions. Everybody in the park knows when you’re going to pinch hit in most situations. But who knows exactly when to take out the starting pitching? Now that’s tough.”

In the NL, the pinch-hitting factor makes the decision for managers many times. Either a manager leaves a tiring pitcher in because he’s due up next inning. And avoids blame if the pitcher fails. Or he pinch hits before the pitcher weakens and a real decision is needed.

In the AL, the manager’s judgment is always on the line. “If the pitcher is out there, then he’s out there because you’ve picked him,” said Weaver.

As important a gift as any manager can have is the knack for removing a pitcher one batter before a big hit. And the worst flaw--always accompanied by boos--is a history of walking to the mound, head down, one batter after the fate of the game has been decided.

Chances are that, no matter how deep the National League digs in its heels, the hitting pitcher is a dying breed. Nothing in sports, as Ted Williams always said, is as hard as hitting a baseball.