Column: DH rule is bane of baseball

Imagine an alternate universe in which the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Mo Williams could take free throws for Shaq (or anyone else on the team) as the team’s designated free-throw shooter. Obviously, Williams’ excellent .898 free-throw percentage would be much preferable to Shaq’s pathetic .496, so Shaq would never come to the line. Even if Williams were sitting on the bench when Shaq was fouled, he would still be allowed to come onto the court, without a substitution, to shoot freebies for his teammates.

Imagine if, additionally, this rule were only in place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. If Shaq played in the Western Conference he would have to shoot his own free throws, as usual. This would be ridiculous, right? Why would the two conferences have different rules in the first place? And regarding the rule itself, free throws are an integral skill to the game, so why would Shaq’s weakness be negated by some random rule designed to increase scoring? No professional league would adopt such a rule, right?

You would be right, unless you were talking about baseball.

In case you haven’t figured it out, the designated free-throw shooter would be the basketball equivalent of baseball’s designated hitter.

We are so used to having the DH around these days that we do not realize how ridiculous it is. Make no mistake about it — the continued existence of the DH is the biggest problem in baseball today.

Rule 1.01 in the MLB rulebook states, “Baseball is a game between two teams of nine players each, under direction of a manager, played on an enclosed field in accordance with these rules, under jurisdiction of one or more umpires.”

There should be an asterisk next to this rule, stating that Rule 1.01 only applies to the National League, because if you play in the American League, there aren’t two teams of nine players each — there are two teams of 10 players each, one of whom does not bat and one of whom does not play the field. It’s funny that Major League Baseball itself tries to cover up the DH rule in its own rulebook, almost like it realizes that it’s an idiotic addition.

Pardon me for getting a bit poetic, but there is something nice and quaint about having the same nine men both hit and play the field.

The designated hitter ruins that symmetry, adding in an extra player who is usually too fat and out of shape to play the field.

You may wonder how one league has this rule while the other does not. Until recently — 1999, in fact — the American League and National League were separate entities with separate rulebooks and separate presidents.

The strange nature of the DH rule is a product of that dichotomy and was instituted in the early 1970s, well before the final unification of the formerly independent leagues.

This was a period of pitching dominance, and the AL introduced the DH in an attempt to boost offense, which it certainly did.

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Some think that this rule difference between the leagues is a fun quirk that makes baseball unique. But this is a flawed argument.

What if in the NFL, the NFC played 10 men to a side while the AFC played the standard 11 men to a side that we are used to? When the teams met, they would play under the rules of the home team.

The AFC teams would have a huge advantage over the NFC teams in such situations, because they would have prepared to have an extra starting player.

Would this be a fun quirk? Doubtful.

This is exactly the case in baseball. The designated-hitter rule takes effect if the home team is from the AL. It’s should be no surprise, then, that since the inception of interleague play in 1997, the AL leads the NL in the overall series, 1,674 to 1,534.

Many American League teams have a player who starts at DH every day; this gives them a competitive advantage in interleague play and in the World Series, as the NL teams have no equivalent. In AL parks, the NL team will start a player who is normally a bench player as their DH. There is a reason these players come off the bench —they are simply not as good as the starters, which puts the NL team at a disadvantage against an AL team with a solid DH. Because of this, AL teams gain an advantage in home games that would normally be equal matchups.

Conversely, NL teams gain no such advantage, unless their pitchers happen to be hitting savants. In NL parks, both pitchers bat, and while there is some disadvantage for the AL team not having its normal DH, this simply levels the playing field and does not tilt it toward the AL team.

The unfair mismatch tilts the interleague balance toward the AL every season.

It is time for the DH to be eliminated from baseball. The National League averaged 4.43 runs per game last year, as opposed to the AL’s 4.82.

This is not a huge difference, and there is certainly no lack of offense in the NL. The DH runs counter to baseball tradition and even the first rule in its own rulebook. Wake me up when the AL starts playing real baseball again — until then, I’ll stick with the NL.