Agreed on getting rid of the whole All Star Game deyermining home field nonsense. It’s an exhibition game; they should not have tried to give it false significance. Personally, I would have no problem if they just named All Star teams and didn’t actually bother to play the game. With free agency and interleague play, it’s just not special anymore. At one time, players were either NL or AL players. The All Star game was the only chance you had to see the best AL hitters fave the top NL pitchers (and vice-versa) on a eomewhat regular basis.
As for the DH, I agree in principle, but it’s not going anywhere. The DH gives older guys who can’t play the field but still can hit a chance to extend their careers and make tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in doing so. The MLBPA would never agree to eliminate it for that reason alone. Owners might, but what owner wants to see the ace starter who just signed a decade-long contract for a quarter of a billion dollars take a fastball to hos pitching arm and be sidelined? As much as this pains me as a baseball purist, both leagues should play by the same rules, and the only practical way to make it happen is to extend the DH to the NL. That will be a sad day indeed, though, if it happens.
That will be a sad day indeed, though, if it happens.
as absurd as the DH rule is, high school ball goes a step further; catchers now get pinch runners...I was a catcher in high school; my 100 yd dash was timed by a sundial, and I’d have loved not having to jeopardize my team by screwing around on the basepaths...except it wouldn’t be baseball, would it...?
It's not going to go away, because the National League is the only organized baseball league at any level above high school that doesn't use it.
You may be old enough to remember when the AL and NL were separate organizations. Each league had a president, its own umpires etc. Then it was decided to eliminate the league structures entirely. It’s now all just MLB. That the AL has the DH and the NL doesn’t is one last reminder of when the leagues were independent of each other. To me the DH is an abomination. But as you say, it is such a career extender, that players will never let go of it. Let the NL play real baseball and let its aging hitters drift over to the AL, just don’t ruin the NL by imposing the DH on it.
I would prefer that. But I'd still keep the All Star break. Let everyone have a few days off to recharge and tackle the second half of the season.
One of the reasons they play the All-Star Game is to raise revenue for the MLB pension fund to support players who retired long before high salaries made the average modern player independently wealthy.