A Designated Hitter for All

I’m not sure you could better describe the quirks and vagaries of baseball to a stranger than to say that on Thursday, commissioner Rob Manfred announced to the world that there will be a designated hitter in MLB starting in 2022!

He announced this almost 50 years after the designated hitter was added to baseball.

You just gotta love baseball, right? You gotta love this game where locker rooms are still called clubhouses because that’s what they were in the 19th century, where pitchers are still called pitchers because in the early days of the game they had to pitch the ball underhand like horseshoes, where expressions like “can of corn” still exist as reference to grocery store techniques from a century ago.

It’s just so baseball to wait half a century after introducing the designated hitter to make it a rule for everybody. It’s like if the NFC played without pass interference, or if the NBA’s Eastern Conference played without a three-point line or the NHL’s Western Conference didn’t recognize icing.

Only they would NEVER do something ridiculous like that. Because they’re not baseball.