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Divisive history For better or for worse, DH celebrates 30th anniversaryPosted: Thursday April 03, 2003 11:41 AM
By John Donovan, SI.com Three decades ago, Ron Blomberg, a 24-year-old first baseman and outfielder for the New York Yankees, walked to the plate at a chilly Fenway Park and dug in against the menacing mug of Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant. And in one of those rare moments that change the face of sports, Blomberg became baseball's first designated hitter. Now here we sit, these 30 years later. After six Yankees World Series titles, the birth of six more franchises, and some 14 Yankees managers later. And, yes, six work stoppages since that fateful day in '73. The designated hitter is still here. Still digging in at every American League game -- and for some All-Star games, half the interleague games and at every World Series game played in an AL park. Here we are, too, still debating the pros and cons of the DH. Still debating whether a game with a DH is real baseball or something just akin to the real thing. Still debating which league is better: The more traditional, more nuanced National League or the bangers' league, the hitters' haven, the home of the DH, the AL. "Has it really been that long?" asks Braves manager Bobby Cox, a DH user back when he managed the Toronto Blue Jays in the mid '80s. "Man, it doesn't seem like it." Ah, but it has been that long. The designated hitter has been on life support a couple of times, just a vote or two away from abolishment. But it has stuck around, even flourished. It has been around long enough to change who plays the game, how it is played -- really, it has touched the whole game, from the bottom line up. The DH has made careers. It's certainly extended many. It has become, for those who believe in it, a legitimate part of baseball. And even for those who don't believe in it, it's a part of the game now, like it or not. "I think it's outlived its usefulness," says Buck Martinez, a user of the DH as a manager of the Blue Jays in 2001-02. Baseball folks had talked about getting someone to hit for the pitcher for years, maybe as far back as the late 1800s. Some minor leagues tried the DH in the '40s, and it was toyed with here and there in lower-level ball for a couple of decades. By 1968, pitchers were absolutely handcuffing hitters in the major leagues. Denny McLain won 31 games for the Detroit Tigers that year. Bob Gibson went 22-9 with a 1.12 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals. Cincinnati's Pete Rose hit .335, but the top hitter in the AL, Boston's Carl Yastrzemski, hit just .301. The dominance of pitchers prompted some rules changes, including the lowering of the mound. And it forced the AL to look into the DH a little more closely. The AL was, in many ways, the junior circuit: The NL scored more runs, drew more people and generally was considered the better product. So, in January of 1973, the AL voted to institute the DH on a three-year trial basis. Thirty years later, the DH has made the AL, clearly, the more offensive league. In every year since Blomberg stepped to the plate in Boston -- he drew a four-pitch, bases-loaded walk from Tiant that first time up -- the AL has had a higher batting average than the NL. The impact of the rule was immediately felt. Some of the greatest players in the history of the game became DHs over the last few years of their careers. Home run king Henry Aaron spent two years in Milwaukee at the end of his career (in 1975 and '76, when the Brewers were in the AL), playing more than 200 games as a DH and slamming 32 homers. Tigers great Al Kaline played the last year of his Hall of Fame career (1974) as a DH, hitting .246 in 146 games -- and collecting his 3,000th hit.
Eddie Murray finished with 3,255 hits in a Hall of Fame career but probably wouldn't have broken 3,000 if not for spending the last four years primarily as a DH. Hall of Famers Dave Winfield and Reggie Jackson were DHs, too. Still, the best DHs were not one-dimensional sluggers or hitters on their last legs. Hal McRae played in more than 1,400 games as a DH with Kansas City from 1973-87. "Hal, he could hit, hit with power, he could run, steal a base," says Pat Corrales, who managed DHs with Texas in 1979 and '80 and in Cleveland from '83-'87. "If you got a guy like McRae, great. But that's the DH. It's a good rule if you have a good DH." Paul Molitor is another of the all-time great DHs. He spent the last eight years of a 21-year career DHing almost exclusively, finishing with nearly 1,200 games as a DH and a lifetime .306 batting average. He was the first DH to steal more than 20 bases. He, too, probably would not have broken the 3,000-hit barrier (he had 3,319) without the DH rule. Then you have a guy like Tom Paciorek. In 1978, he had already been cut twice by the Braves, and was playing for the Seattle Mariners when manager Darrell Johnson stuck him in as a DH against Milwaukee ace Mike Caldwell. Paciorek went 4-for-4 that day, including a home run, and hit another homer the next day. On the verge of being cut, he stuck with the Mariners, hit .299 and played for nine more years in the big leagues. "I owe the last nine years of my career to the DH," he says. These days, Edgar Martinez of the Mariners is considered the class of the DHs. He's been the team's DH every year since 1995, hitting .325 since then. In '95, he hit .356, becoming the only DH ever to win the batting title. Though DHs often are viewed as part-time players, guys like Martinez don't make part-time money. He made $9 million last season and will make an estimated $6 million for 2003. Despite the fact that it's been around longer than most players, the DH still is a controversial topic, and it's not just the should-there-or-shouldn't there-be arguments. In 1999, Texas DH Rafael Palmeiro hit .324, slammed 47 home runs, drove in 128 runs -- and was named the AL Gold Glove winner at first base. He had played only 28 games there. There are those who continue to call for the abolishment of the rule, though after 30 years, it would seem almost unfathomable to see that now. And for all the proponents of the DH -- people who would rather see a hitter than a pitcher come to the plate -- there are still a multitude of old-schoolers who prefer baseball the way it originally was played. "I like baseball as it was. I just think it's a better game," says Atlanta's Cox. "If I'm going to pay to see a game, this [in the NL] is just the better game." That, like much about the DH, is up for debate. And probably will be for the next 30 years.
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