There are two things every man thinks he can do better than every other man — grill a hamburger and manage a baseball team.
Think about it. How many times have you leaned over your buddy’s shoulder to give him unsolicited advice as he grills? Yeah, make sure you don’t flip it too many times. Don’t want to lose any of the juice. You going to put the cheese on now? I mean, it’s your call, but I think you got at least another few minutes.
How many times have you yelled at your TV in frustration for an apparent, idiotic coaching decision? Why are we throwing it on fourth-and-one? Don’t take him out now, he’s barely over 100 pitches. You call a timeout and that’s the play you draw up, really?
What does this all have to do with why the designated hitter is bad for baseball?
The reason why we are so overconfident in our ability to grill a burger and manage a ball team is that both require simple decisions that produce immediate, tangible results. I told you that burger was going to burn. I knew you should have pulled that pitcher, everyone saw the home run coming.
Hindsight is always going to be 20/20, so we believe we would have made the right decision had we been in charge. The problem with the designated hitter (DH) is that it eliminates nearly every possible managerial decision, detracting from the overall experience of watching a baseball game.
In every game, the biggest decision a manager will make is when to take the starting pitcher out of the game. Factors like the pitcher’s performance and the score affect the decision, but often that decision is dictated solely on where the team is in its lineup.
If the pitcher’s spot comes up in a big moment in the game, the manager must choose between trying to score now or let his pitcher keep throwing well.
My colleague Mr. Bohm will almost assuredly argue that the DH allows the best of both worlds — give a real hitter a chance and leave the pitcher in the game.
Where’s the intrigue in that? Where’s the in-game suspense? If you pull him, you then worry about your bullpen, trying to exploit the best matchup, while making sure you have pitchers left if the game goes extra innings. The NL has more variables to consider.
An AL manager simply trots out his nine best hitters and waits for something to happen. An NL manager must find ways to manufacture offense around his pitcher, be they sacrifice bunts, hit-and-runs or suicide squeezes.
And with each decision, there’s going to be immediate backlash by fans. That’s why we watch the game. We don’t want to walk away saying, “Man, our nine best guys just didn’t have it compared to their best nine.”
We want to believe something other than pure talent can win a game. That strategy and game plans can overcome a skill deficit. Otherwise, there would be no Davids, only Goliaths.
Yes, there is a laundry list of other reasons why the DH should be banned. It takes away from the tradition of the game. It adds too much offense. It creates a dissymmetry between the leagues. It violates the fundamental rule of baseball that each team has nine players who play the field and hit.
Ultimately, the biggest criticism to the DH remains the fact that it dumbs down baseball, removing strategy, decisions and matchups that make baseball so fun, not just to watch, but to talk about years later.
Kirk Gibson’s pinch-hit walk-off home run in the 1988 World Series, arguably the most famous play in the history of baseball? Never would have happened if the NL had a DH.
Baseball is a thinking man’s game. The winner is not the team who can sit back and launch the most home runs. The winner is the team that most effectively utilizes its 25-man roster to score more runs than the opponent.
You want to see a slugfest? Go watch the MMA. You want to see American sports at its finest? Watch a National League baseball game.
Contact Mike Lazarus at mlazarus “at” stanford.edu.