Maybe this is a misconception I have but in the American League am I right thinking that regular season/playoffs the pitchers don’t bat and in the National league they do?
I don’t watch the regular season games (often too nice to be inside watching the tube) and have only been to one pro game years ago at Candlestick Park, that would have been very late 70’s / '81 but I usually pick a team, usually an underdog, to root for in the playoffs.
I’d love to live in a city with pro teams
You’re right.
Designated hitter.
Reported for move to the Game Room.
Yes, the AL has the Designated Hitter who bats in place of the pitcher. The NL doesn’t. In the World Series they play according to the rules of the home team for each game.
Yes, in the American League they have a guy called a “Designated Hitter” who only bats doesn’t ever play in the field. The pitcher, then, only has to pitch and doesn’t ever bat.
In the National League, everyone on the team takes a turn at bat and out in the field. There are no “offensive” or “defensive” specialists in the NL.
During interleague play and the World Series, I’m pretty sure they play by the home team’s rules. DH in AL stadiums, and no DH in NL stadiums.
Moved to the Game Room, and title edited to better indicate subject.
thanks everyone
If I remember correctly, the DH began because some people thought that the original game didn’t have enough action, i,e pitchers batting is boring. But, it could be argued that it was started in order to give aging players a longer career.
I personally dislike the DH rule. It robs the manager of making a time honored decision: Do I take out a pitcher (who is throwing well) and put in a pinch hitter, because I need runs? To me this is baseball!
At the time the DH rule was introduced specifically to increase the amount of hitting, which in turn would increase public interest. (This is a correct assumption; there is a positive correlation between offense and attendance.) Obviously, the owners didn’t really give a crap about career length. They can always find another ballplayer.
The idea for a DH rules goes back to the very earliest days of baseball. Pitchers have been generally awful hitters since Babe Ruth was a child, and there was at least some idle talk of taking them out of the lineup for decades and decades, and it was seriously considered more than a few times.
In the late 1960s Major League Baseball saw offense plummet to the lowest levels seen in a few generations. The DH rule was one of the ways suggested to reverse this trend, but there wasn’t universal agreement on how it was implemented; nonetheless, the idea was pretty well entrenched and American League owners voted, in a plsit decision, to try it out for three years, beginning in 1973. As to why the AL and not the NL voted for it, the AL was for some reason seeing offensive level collapse again een after the other rules changes implemented in 1969:
Year / Runs Scored Per Team Per Game
1969 - AL 4.09, NL 4.05
1970 - AL 4.17, NL 4.52
1971 - AL 3.87, NL 3.91
1972 - AL 3.47, NL 3.91
3.47 runs per game is really, really low, almost as low as it had been in the infamous Year of the Pitcher of 1968. Truth be told, the American League in 1972 was putting out one hell of a boring product if you wanted to see offense. Only one team cracked four runs per game. The average team hit just 98 home runs, and there wasn’t a lot of baserunning, either; the average team stole just 71 bases. (The averages for this season, a fairly normal year for offense, were 179 homers and 107 steals, with fewer men caught stealing.) Despite striking out less than they do today AL batters in 1972 hit a pathetic .239, hit fewe doubles or triples, and no hitter did anything particularly noteworthy in any stat. It was boring.
American League attendance was stagnant and inferior to National League attendance so, basically, they felt something had to be done.
Thank you RJ for the insight. But, I would have preferred they gave out free t-shirts or water bottles to spark attendance instead of creating the DH. Before the DH, I was an American League fan. The DH rule converted me into a National League fan.
Hey, different strokes for different folks. I’m a fan of my local team; wouldn’t matter what league they were in.
I like having one league with the DH and one without; baseball having two distinct leagues is, I think, one of its charms. That they have been slowly eroding the distinction between the AL and NL is something I really dislike.
I’d be interested in hearing more about how this is true, if you don’t mind.
Well, I just did this in the other thread, but…
Until 1999 the American League and National League really were two separate professional baseball leagues, with separate rules, offices, even separate Presidents. They shared some resources, a common draft, and a common Commissioner, but they were legally distinct entities who basically agreed to play nicely with each other in 1903 and continued to make agreements and treaties.
They began chipping away at that with interleague play, and then franchise transfers, and then in 1999 did away with the separate league offices and legally merged them. So while they call them “Leagues,” they are no longer two “leagues” as they were from 1901 to 1999. They’re now really conferences, but maintain the “league” fiction as a PR ploy.
I’d like the distinctions clearly reintroduced; no interleague play, different rules, no franchises moving from one league to the other. Either that or just admit it’s one league and let’s get on with it.