BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : WORLD SERIES / TORONTO BLUE JAYS vs. PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES : It’s About Time to Designate the Same Rule for Each League

Let’s see . . .

If this is Tuesday and Philadelphia, it must be time for the World Series to implement a new set of rules.

It must be time for baseball to compromise its showcase event and to again demonstrate how its owners agree only to disagree.

It’s time for the American League’s Toronto Blue Jays to shelve use of a designated hitter for the three games in the National League home of the Phillies. The DH will reappear only if the Series returns to Toronto for Games 6 and 7.

Baseball remains the only sport that plays by two different rules and exposes itself to so much October criticism, when it unsatisfactorily tries to satisfy both sides.

I say, forget it.

Either dump the DH entirely or have both leagues employ it.

As Toronto outfielder Joe Carter said Monday: “It doesn’t make sense. You’ve got two leagues with two different sets of rules and they play the same game.”

And what have you now is the Blue Jays, having put together a team with the designated hitter in mind and elicited a career-best season from Hall of Fame candidate Paul Molitor, faced with one of the toughest Series decisions since the introduction of the DH.

To keep Molitor in the lineup, which is manager Cito Gaston’s objective because he batted .332, hit 22 homers and drove in 111 runs, he must either bench first baseman John Olerud, the American League batting king, or third baseman Ed Sprague, who drove in 73 runs batting eighth and emerged as a solid defensive player in his first season as successor to Kelly Gruber.

In recent years, injuries have basically restricted Molitor to the DH role. He played 28 games at first base this year but has not played third since 1990, when he appeared in two games at that position.

How tough is Gaston’s decision?

“The toughest in baseball history,” Molitor said with a laugh Monday after joining Olerud and Sprague in a meeting with the manager.

Gaston is expected to bench Olerud and use Molitor at first against left-hander Danny Jackson in Game 3 tonight, then bench Sprague and use Molitor at third against right-handers Tommy Greene and Curt Schilling in Games 4 and 5.

Molitor has been working at both first and third, but when asked Monday where he feels most comfortable, he said, “The batter’s box.”

Said Sprague: “At this point of the season the team comes first. We’re all willing to take a seat if it makes it easier for Cito because we respect him as a manager. Our goal is to win three more games.

“It’s too bad the American League team has to suffer by changing the lineup it has played with all season, taking out a key component, but we’ll have to adjust.”

Too bad, indeed.

Are the Phoenix Suns asked to bench Charles Barkley when playing a title game on the court of the Chicago Bulls? Did Wayne Gretzky come out of the Kings’ lineup when the Stanley Cup was at stake in Montreal?

“I always opposed the DH,” former commissioner Fay Vincent said from his New York office Monday. “I had an American League owner who felt he could muster enough votes to get it killed, but his effort kind of died in the process.

“I think in time they’ll get rid of it because it doesn’t make sense for the two leagues to use different formats, and it obviously becomes very cumbersome at the World Series.

“I think the American League team is at a real disadvantage. Either Paul Molitor becomes a victim, or the player he replaces does.”

Vincent said it will not be easy to repeal the designated-hitter rule because the players’ union views it as a way to keep older players employed.

“But I seem to remember guys like Johnny Mize and Smoky Burgess coming off the bench for years because they were great pinch-hitters,” he added.

Those who favor the DH argue that it adds offense and is far more exciting than seeing a pitcher trying to hit.

Opponents contend that the rule strips the game of managerial strategy, leads to pitching injuries because teams that do not have to pinch-hit for the pitcher tend to stay with a struggling starter longer, and it adds a significant salary at a time of economic concern.

Toronto General Manager Pat Gillick said he favors the DH and thinks fans agree with him because of the impact on offense.

“I think the National League always felt it was the superior league and sees itself as a last stronghold for the baseball purist, but that’s nonsense,” he said. “Times have changed. Fans want to see action, and they don’t get it watching the pitcher hit.”

Gillick, like Carter, who actually favors the National League style because of strategy and the use of the bench and role players, said it is ridiculous for the leagues to be on different pages and dangerous to ask pitchers who haven’t gone to the plate for two or three years to do it again in the Series.

It is also ridiculous and potentially embarrassing to a player and his team, of course, to have to ask a designated hitter to play a position foreign or uncomfortable to him, to have to bench a batting champion or another regular, to play four World Series games one way and three another.

They have been trying it this way since 1986. In the 13 previous years, both teams used the DH one year and not the next.

That format was dumped after the 1985 Series, in which the Kansas City Royals’ talented designated hitter, Hal McRae, was able to be used only as a pinch-hitter. Kansas City used the contact-hitting Frank White in the cleanup role for that Series and upset the St. Louis Cardinals.

The Blue Jays have enough offense to compensate for the loss of Sprague or Olerud, but it’s a decision Gaston should not have to make.