Tag: Aaron Judge

Designated Hitter Hater

Flat out: I am a designated hitter (DH) hater. Since the professional baseball teams in the American League started using this concept many years ago, it hasn’t overjoyed me.

The idea is based on the “fact” that pitchers can’t hit and therefore shouldn’t have to hit. This year (2022) the National League has gone along with the DH idea. Now, a player can hit for the pitcher in both leagues and that alleviates the pitcher from having to pick up a bat. It also relieves the designated hitter from having to play the field.

First off, why can’t pitchers learn to hit? In games in high school and across the country at almost all levels some of the best hitters on a team are in fact the pitchers. One of the greatest pitchers of all time, Babe Ruth, was also the greatest hitter of all time. Sadly, they retired him from pitching so he could play the field and hit.

Fine, fine, maybe you buy into the idea of a pitcher not having to hit. I don’t like the idea, obviously, but I think I lost that argument long ago.

But I have another idea: Why do we need the DH at all? Okay, the pitchers don’t have to hit. Fine. But why do we have to throw in another player to hit instead? Don’t do that. We don’t need a designated hitter at all.

That’s great, right, no DH: “So let it be written, so let it be done.” (The 10 Commandments movie.) That’s right. Eliminate the DH and go to (here comes my really, really radical idea) an eight-player lineup. Why do we need nine players to hit when eight would probably make every team’s lineup a better one?

I would prefer to see Aaron Judge and Mike Trout and other high-powered hitters get an extra shot at bat with an eight-player lineup. “Eight hitters” is the best idea! Get rid of the DH. I think it would make the game much stronger too.

Most DHs are not assets to a team as are the other eight hitters. They are often older players playing out the string, or poor fielders who wouldn’t make the team if not for the DH, or you can add any other reason which you imagine.

Look, the teams would save money and the fans would get to see the better hitters.

Therefore, as a designated hitter hater, I call for the end of said DH and an inauguration of an eight-player line-up.

Baseball would be far better for doing this.

So I have written it and “so let it be done!”

Little Outrages

 

  • Gary Sanchez, the catcher for the New York Yankees, has tired arms. That is to say that his arms cannot keep up with many pitches to the left of him, to the right of him, and sometimes low and in the dirt. You will note the number of passed-ball he allows as one indication. But a better indication is the fact that balls get by him in counts that are not critical, balls that do not get by other catchers. He might also have other tired parts of his body that do not allow him to move as quickly as most other catchers.
  • What percentage of people attending a ball game eat something? Drink something?
  • Every stadium should have a movable roof. Minneapolis has a brand-new stadium with no roof. It snows there in October and April. I went to a game in Denver and it was snowed out!
  • Does anyone else want the creators of the jingle for “Kars for Kids” given the death penalty? I wrote a full article about this company. Not exactly what it pretends to be.
  • Speaking of commercials: Empire City Casino in Yonkers, New York has two commercials that are insulting to the intelligence of even rather dumb people. The first and most egregious has an “everyman” doing weird stuff to his face to increase his luck, as if facial weirdness can do such a thing – and, naturally, he wins and his wins come at almost all the games! The casino is telling us that even a moronic jerk can beat the house but his secret way of winning is magical – just like yours till be.
  • The second Empire City commercial has a group of good-looking people at a row of slot machines who one-after-another in a split moment all win the huge jackpots on their machines. They are all lined up at the machines, one, two, three, four, five jumping up as the jackpot wins pour in. In over 30 years of casino gambling I have never seen such a thing – in fact, I have never seen any two people sitting next to each other win the huge jackpot at the same time. However, I have seen an extraordinary number of players sitting next to each other lose.
  • Soda? I hate soda. It isn’t good for you. You know that. But if you watched the Olympics and saw all those world-class athletes doing their thing in soda commercials you might get the idea that drinking this crap would help your athletic performance. Did anyone watching those commercials believe that? Now Aaron Judge is doing a Pepsi commercial but at least he doesn’t even pretend it’s good. He just drinks the stuff and nods with pleasure.
  • How come all those guys with erectile dysfunction on those Cialis commercials are rugged, good-looking studs throwing bales of hay on trucks, working he-man jobs? There are no little waddling fat former-accountant guys in their flabby late 70’s.
  • And why on those commercials does the couple take baths in separate tubs (outdoors no less) after they have sex? Shouldn’t they be clean before they have sex? Otherwise the unwashed body-smells would be overwhelming.
  • I will say this again: Why do the commercials for gold and silver want us to buy the stuff with the money they claim will soon be worthless? Why don’t the companies just keep the gold and silver since it will be so valuable in the coming future?

Frank’s latest books are Confessions of a Wayward Catholic!; I Am a Dice Controller and I Am a Card Counter. All of Frank’s books are available from Amazon.com, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, e-books and at bookstores.

He Has a Girlfriend!

This past weekend I went to a Yankees versus Texas Rangers game. Yanks lost 8 to 1 but Aaron Judge hit a home run so the day wasn’t a total loss. He’s the most exciting player to hit baseball since Mike Trout.

This was my first time at the new Yankee Stadium. As a kid (long ago at an age far, far away) I used to inhabit the old Yankee Stadium; you know the one, where the center field distance was 490 feet and to hit a homer to left center (or even right center) took the power of a DiMaggio, Gehrig, Mantle or Ruth. Centerfield was known as “death valley.” When Maris had his 61-homerun streak, I attended 23 games. To my way of thinking, Maris set a “real” record, as he was steroid-free, unlike Barry Bonds and some others.

I was with my wife the Beautiful AP and Jerry “Stickman” and his wife the Sainted Tres. It was the last – number 30 – of the baseball stadiums Stickman and I visited in our Baseball Odyssey. Our wives joined us at a number of the ballparks and were certain to be at this capstone game.

We had $300 seats – yes 600 bucks to watch a Yankee game in seats that would cost about $60 to $90 in other stadiums. And $$$$$ to pay for our limo – way, way, too, too much.

Our seats were in row 15 over first base dugout, in the shade of the overhang. These comfortable seats were padded, two together, separated from the next two seats by a table, and you could order food that was delivered to you – food that cost the equivalent of what right-handed hitters faced in the old stadium, a helluva lot! And that is New York: a beautiful baseball stadium plopped in a ghetto and prices that are ridiculous.

The high ticket prices, however, could not keep away the worst fans ever. You know them; they’re the ones whose antics pull your attention away from the field and onto themselves.

In this case it was the beer-guzzling, 20-something man/boy who was compelled to yell out the name of a player followed by “you suck.”

“Natoli, you suck!”

“Beltre, you suck!”

Once per player was not enough, nor twice, nor three times. It was over and over and over again, throughout the entire game.

His target was not only Texas Rangers. He even threw a few Yanks in there as well, especially pitcher Tyler Clippard who seemed to suck more than all the players combined as poor Clippard gave up hit after hit and run after run in the game, “Clippard! You suck! You suck! You suck!” He was proud of that last load of “you suck” because, “He heard me that time.”

I asked Stickman, Tres and AP, “Can you believe he belongs to the same species that achieved space flight?” Still later I asked incredulously, “Can you believe he came from the same species that discovered penicillin?”

After a particularly loud and pointed, “You suck,” hurled at a Texas Ranger, this guy’s girlfriend squealed at his amazing wit. Yes, he has a girlfriend. They will reproduce one day and his mini-me will be weaned on baseball, beer and boorishness.

It sucks, doesn’t it?