DH Rule Won’t Be Abolished Without Fight

Armando Benitez, the Baltimore Oriole relief pitcher who sparked Tuesday’s brawl with the New York Yankees in the Bronx by nailing Tino Martinez between the shoulder blades with a fastball after Bernie Williams had homered, has a history of being unable to control his frustration and anger.

He quit his minor league teams twice, and was demoted to the minors by the Orioles after he hit Martinez, then with the Seattle Mariners, with a pitch in 1995. When he was recalled that year and veteran Orioles confiscated the clothes of rookies in an annual rite, Benitez angrily backed a teammate into a corner before agreeing to get on the team bus in his uniform pants.

Benitez is Benitez, and pitchers will always throw at hitters as part of the game, but the situation is compounded in the American League because of the designated hitter rule, which means the pitcher doesn’t have to go to the plate and face retaliation. It is the pitcher’s teammates who get whacked.

The Orioles divorced themselves from Benitez’s act and issued an apology, but the episode won’t erode player union support of the designated hitter or prompt the union to agree to its removal as part of the negotiations on extension of interleague play beyond 1998.

While owners ultimately are expected to get the extension, they undoubtedly will have to continue to live with the designated hitter in the AL, although they claim the right to revoke it unilaterally, which is unlikely to hold up in arbitration if they attempt to exercise it.

The union, which long has insisted that one of its objectives is to protect and extend the rights of young players, dismissed a management offer to phase out the designated hitter in return for increasing the roster from 25 players to 26. The 26th player probably would have been a low-salaried younger player, and though it would have created 30 new jobs, the union’s real objective is protecting the high-salaried designated hitters who help elevate the overall salary scale.

Those young players can wait their turn. Anything else is lip service.

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Oriole General Manager Pat Gillick is under fire from Latino groups for what they consider an ethnic slur in his attempt to present a rationale for Benitez’s action.

“You have to understand Armando comes from a different culture, a different background,” Gillick told the Baltimore Sun. “Latin American people can be quite emotional and become quite frustrated. I think Latin American people have a different temperament than people in North America.”

Said Cuauhtemoc Figueroa, director of policy and communications for the League of United Latin American Citizens: “It’s a shame that Mr. Gillick has to make these generalizations about a whole portion of society. We can’t look at [the statements] any other way than [as] an ethnic slur. We understand that he was trying to defend Benitez. What we are concerned about is the continued use of cultural stereotypes to explain behavior.”

Gillick, as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, was among baseball’s most aggressive general managers in the scouting and signing of Latino players.

Said acting Commissioner Bud Selig: “I’m certain that Pat in no way meant to be disrespectful or insensitive. And certainly, none of us, including Pat, would condone that type of insensitive remarks.”