Sports Watch
Designated hitters aren't used in National League parks. The same applies for the World Series. You see, the National League plays real baseball.
Next year's All-Star Game will be in Cleveland's Jacobs Field and so designated hitters will be utilized.
Which works out perfectly to my way of thinking. Next year's American League manager can use a designated hitter for Albert Belle, the Indians' outfielder, who struck out three times to become the first American Leaguer in 40 years to do so.
Interestingly, the All-Star Game is the last of the interleague events that adopted the DH rule, doing so for the first time in 1989 when it was played at Oakland.
They do it for spring training in games at American League ball parks. The DH was part of the World Series first back in 1976 but it was amended in 1987 so that it could be used only in AL parks.
But I bring up the subject of designated hitters now - not because of its real need for Albert Belle next year - but because interleague play also will begin in 1997.
Nothing has been decided as to how the major leagues will deal with the DH dilemma.
Should the DH be abolished for those cross-pollination games?
Should the DH be used in both National and American League parks?
Should the DH be used in American League parks but not National League parks?
I hope the National League owners stick by their guns and adamantly refuse to use baseball's worst abomination next to the wild-card, at least in their own ball parks.
OF course, I don't see baseball giving up the DH rule, which was first adopted in 1973 after the owners' meetings the winter before in Waikiki, by the way. Add that to some of the things we in Hawaii can be blamed for.
Actually, thank some bartender who served too many mai tais to the AL owners. Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley also wanted to employ a designated runner along with his DH brainchild because he had a speed burner in Herb Washington, who stole 30 bases in two years for the A's without coming to bat once.
Finley got voted down on that one.
It's not that I think the American League owners will come to their senses any time soon and dump the DH rule.
It's just that the Major League Baseball Players Association won't go for it. After all, how many veteran players do you think will keep their jobs if they had to wear a glove and take the field?
One union survey showed that the designated hitter was the second-highest-paid position after first basemen. So obviously, it pays to keep those good-hit, no-field guys around.
NATIONAL League owners probably will never force the issue. They'll concede that it has its benefits in the American League. Like, for instance, they can use the DH for Albert Belle in next year's All-Star Game.
In a way, I like the DH rule because it continues to be a good subject of controversy and good column fodder. But as a baseball purist and traditionalist, the designated hitter continues to grate me. I mean, will the next baseball scandal be called, "10 Men Out?"
Besides, the DH rule ain't helping my Boston Red Sox one bit after all these years.
Of course, Boston manager John McNamara flat out blew it in the 1986 World Series against the New York Mets. Now if there ever was a guy who should have been strictly a DH, it was Bill Buckner.