Play It Again, Brad. Play Real Baseball for Us - Before Time Goes By.
Of all the baseball towns in the whole wide major league baseball world, she had to walk into mine.
Her name is Desi Hitner. I call her “DH” for short.
DH used to be my doll and, in the words of my old buddy, Damon Runyon, she was one fine sweet-looking broad at first glance – the kind of chick that any rising uptown guy like me would be very, very happy to have hanging on his arm for a swell night out on the town in old Houston at a somebody place like the Atomic or Cotton Clubs.
Trouble was – DH had a glitter that wouldn’t stay put. It fell out all over the place, especially on the shoulders, shirt collars, and lips of other guys. You just couldn’t trust the dame. With all the stupefying offensive power she offered with her good looks, she simply had no defense from the hungry eyes of all them big bad wolves who showed up – just to hit upon my gal Hitner.
I had no choice. I had to dump her back in 1973, just about the same time she was becoming real popular with all the dudes in all the American League cities. Over there, DH got so popular that they even named a new stupid hitting rule after her.
Can you believe it? The American League actually created a new position called the “designated hitter” back in 1973 for a player who would come up to hit as a regular part of the batting order for each team in place of one player on the field, usually the pitcher, who wouldn’t bat at all.
And get this: the designated hitter would never take the field at all. The guy wouldn’t ever need a glove because he would never take a fielding position to ever face a batted ball himself.
In theory, at first, and in actuality over time, it became entirely conceivable that a player could have an outstanding MLB career as a hitter without ever, or only rarely, taking the field in a more traditional spot to play defense.
Take Edgar Martinez, for example. Martinez has a Hall of Fame shot with his 18 seasons (1987-2004) as a DH with only some playing time at third and first. Heck! Edgar finished with a .314 batting average and 309 home runs at Seattle – and he might as well have done it all without ever catching so much as a weak pop fly because it was the DH position and his bat that gave him that HOF shot in the American League.
Now the DH is coming to Houston in 2013 with the American League and it’s bringing my old lady friend Desi Hitner, the other DH, with it. It seems that my old DH is now heavily invested up front as a widow to one of the magnates of a Japanese company that holds some shares in the Mariners, a club that will soon enough be a divisional rival of our Houston Astros in the American League West come 2013.
Ouch. I need to stay far away from that web-weaving lady hurt before I have a chance to prove that age and wisdom do not always ride together on the same rails.
In the meanwhile, I’m just going to enjoy some real pitcher-bats-and-manager-has-to-make-strategic-late-in-game-PH-decisions baseball while I still can.
Play it again, Astros Manager Brad Mills. Do it for all the Astros fans, and especially for those who say they won’t be around after this coming season plays out as the last run through the National League.
You did it for Drayton McLane – and you can do it for us.
Play it again, Brad. – Play real baseball for us in 2012 – before time goes by.
Signed,
The Ghost of Humphrey Bogart
February 23, 2012
Tags: DH Satire
The Pecan Park Eagle 
February 23, 2012 at 2:44 pm |
I knew DH, I dated her back in 1973 ,lots of fun that gal , Bill she never mentioned your name , now she’s back in our lives ,playing it again.
February 23, 2012 at 4:28 pm |
I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast full of blaphemous names, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a gold cup full of abominations and of the unclean things of her immorality and upon her forehead a name was written, a mystery, “Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth”. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses (Rev. 17:3-6)
Hear ye now the mystery revealed for the woman is the designated hitter and the seven heads are the television networks and the ten horns represent the ten names (not nine) in the lineup. She has made herself rich through her abominations yet has defiled the great heavenly game with her impurity and immorality. The game will be punished and the woman cast into the lake of fire. Repent and turn away from this blasphemous rule that doth consume everything in its wake until the day of judgement.
February 23, 2012 at 4:42 pm |
Go into a right arm-pumping walk-off homer trot, Mr. Hulsey. That one left the yard with both distance and hum.
Very. Very. Good.
February 25, 2012 at 7:13 pm |
Torn between two lovers: the crone that is a pitcher standing in the batter’s box with a fly-swatter in his hands and the golddigging DH that never has to carry his stoney glove onto the field of play nor the albatross of a game losing error back into the clubhouse.
As a simple person I’m of the opinion there is a simple solution that adds rather than detracts from the game: Make Desi married and faithful.
Allow a DH but with the proviso that he is linked directly to the person he is batting for. Typically the DH will bat for the starting pitcher, but with this change when the manager changes pitchers he loses the use of his DH as well. Sometimes when he’s stuck with starting someone with all the skills of, say, a J.A. Happ, he might opt to not even link the DH with the pitcher at all, figuring that might only be a three or four inning stint and better to link the DH to his beleagured catcher or shortstop who can’t hit a lick, or maybe his overpaid first-baseman who still isn’t in game condition in the third week of May, but whom he doesn’t have the guts (or front office approval) to bench altogether. Or the manager might just save his best bench bat to use as a late-game pinch-hitter and use a lesser hitter as a DH in the early part of the game.
It seems to me a rule along these lines would add a little offense over the non-DH game and add intrigue to the all-DH game. I’ll bet Tony LaRussa would have loved to play with it. 🙂