Time Machine: National League finally adopts the Designated Hitter

This story originally ran in the Japanese newspaper Yukan Fuji in 2020.

TOKYO — When the MLB season officially opens later this year, the type of baseball that will be played will be different than in years past. For one thing, we will see designated hitters in the National League, something the Senior Circuit, as it is also called, has resisted for half a century. The belief in the N.L. (as is the case in the Central League of Japan) has been that having a pitcher hit somehow keeps the purity of the game intact — playing it as it was intended. The N.L. purists would tell you that an aging overweight batter who can’t play the field or run the bases, but only swing the bat, should no longer be in the game.

“If you can’t play the complete game, then you should walk away,” is the thinking.

In the American League (much like the Pacific League in Japan) the DH rule was adopted in 1973 in the belief it would help increase offense and attract more fans who were tired of seeing weak-hitting pitchers continually making outs. That has turned out to be the case as the AL typically has higher offensive production than the National League, higher batting averages and more home runs (3,478 homers to 3,294) and higher ERA’s as well.