I have watched interleague games in the past, but for whatever reason I have decided to take particular notice in the difference in games using the AL and NL rules. My conclusion is that anyone who likes the National League better needs to be put in a straight jacket. It's not nearly as fun to watch, and if you try to argue that it is, you're lying to yourself. Now before you start, I already know the first argument for you NL loyalists. The NL rules have more tradition. My answer to that is, who cares? Tradition in sports stinks. If we worried about tradition all of the time instead of evolution of sports, there would still be no 3 point line in basketball, there would be no 2 point conversions in football, and there would still be 8 teams in the NCAA basketball tournament.
Having the pitchers hit ruins the flow of a baseball game. When I am watching an AL game, and the 7th batter hits a line drive in the gap to put runners on 2nd and 3rd with two outs, then the next at-bat is very exciting. If the batter gets a hit, then you are probably looking at a 2-run swing. In this same scenario in the NL, they pitching team would just intentionally walk the 8th batter to get to the pitcher. No pitchers can hit. Even the pitchers tho can hit, can't hit. The best hitting pitchers in the baseball have a batting average somewhere around the low 200s, which is not good, and a pitcher coming up to bat just ruins the momentum that a team created on offense. The bottom line is it just makes the game less fun to watch. In the AL, intentional walks are usually reserved for great hitters. I watched a game last night where the Marlins intentionally walked Hank Conger, the rookie catcher and 8th batter for the Angels twice to get to the pitcher. That's just not good for baseball.
My next point is that there are plenty of DHs in baseball who are some of the most exciting players in the game. Guys like Vladimir Guerrero, Jim Thome, Travis Hafner, and David Ortiz might not be in baseball anymore if not for the DH rule. Those guys are fun to watch. The bottom line is, if you are looking to watch an exciting baseball game to watch, who would you rather see hit, David Ortiz or Tim Wakefield?
I have heard the argument a lot that you don't really use a lot of strategy in the AL. In the NL there are a lot of pinch hitters, defensive substitutions, and double switches. I agreed with this argument for a long time, until I heard someone else refute that argument, and off the top of my head I can't remember who it was, but it opened my eyes. They said that it really doesn't take much strategy at all to manage in the NL, because most of the decisions are obvious. It is not a difficult decision to pinch hit for the pitcher in the 7th inning in a close game. Furthermore, it is not a difficult decision to turn that into a double switch so that the pitcher spot is further away in the lineup. It is more difficult to make a decision to pinch hit, or bring in a new pitcher in the AL, where you don't have an obvious opportunity to do it. After all, if all of these managers in the NL are making decisions based on avoiding the pitchers spot in the lineup, why not just make the rule for the DH in the first place like the AL.
We are in the age of needing sports to be exciting, or people will change the channel, and the NL rules are old-fashioned and boring. It's time for the NL to get with the times and go with the DH.
A while back, I wrote a post about changing the baseball divisions. Suddenly this is a hot topic in baseball, and many experts are putting in their input. Of all the ones I have seen, the one I like the most is from Jim Bowden, former MLB general manager, and current ESPN baseball expert. Here is his article and although I would keep the DH instead of take away the DH, I would agree with everything else he wrote here.
http://espn.go.com/blog/the-gms-office/post/_/id/363/mlb-needs-geographic-realignment
are you alive?
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