The DH
You never forget your first.
The designated hitter is one of the most controversial aspects of baseball. Sure, it’s been overshadowed lately by more recent rule changes— the pitch clock, bigger bases, the extra innings Manfred runner on second. (I refuse to call it a ghost runner, because that’s not what a ghost runner is.) But if you spend any time in baseball groups on social media, you know that the adoption of the DH is still a hot topic, even though it happened in 1973. (In the American League, at least. The NL didn’t add it until 2022.)
I don’t really get it. Then again, I don’t get the gripes about the pitch clock and most of the other rule changes either. (Except the Manfred runner— that one sucks.) I’ll admit I might be biased. I grew up watching American League baseball well after the adoption of the DH, so it’s always seemed normal to me. But for most of my life, pitchers batted in the National League, so it’s not like I didn’t experience the flip side. And I concede that pitchers batting adds an extra element of strategy to the game, and I’m all for that. At the same time, I think that’s an outdated argument.
Specialization is the name of the game in modern baseball, whether we like it or not. I don’t hate on the current game, but I do believe there are many elements of it that are inferior to the game I grew up watching. Chief among them is how pitchers are handled. I’d like to see starting pitchers go more than five or six innings. I want them to be less concerned about pitch counts. And if they’re willing to put at least a little effort into hitting, I wouldn’t mind seeing them bat.
The problem is that they don’t. And I don’t really blame them. With the money at stake and the intense nature of pitching in 2023, it’s not worth it to them to put in time at the batting cages. (Unless your name is Shohei Ohtani, but he’s a one-in-a-million exception.) Nor is the added risk of injury worth it to the teams. (And unfortunately, Ohtani proves my point on this one. Look at how much time he’s spent on the IL in his short career.)
Old-time baseball heads love to complain about something though. So I don’t expect the argument to go away anytime soon. Before you get mad, I’m not excluding myself from this stereotype— this just isn’t the hill I’m prepared to die on. But if you enjoy watching sub-.200 batting averages and pitchers taking weak cuts, more power to you. I, on the other hand, prefer watching someone who knows what they’re doing at the plate.
That’s why I want to take a look at my first favorite DH this week. If you’re a Royals fan, you might have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve written about our favorite team. This is not by chance. I recently started contributing pieces to Kings of Kauffman (check it out if you’re a Royals fan), so I’ve filtered a lot of my Royals material in that direction. But when it comes to talking about all-time great designated hitters, I had to go back to my roots. And even if you’re not a Royals fan, it’s never a bad time to read up on the great Hal McRae.
Hal McRae did not start his career as a Royal any more than he started out as a DH. He was drafted and played the first five years of his career in Cincinnati. (See, something for you Reds fans right out of the gate.) He was also a left fielder, until he broke his leg playing winter ball in Puerto Rico in 1969.
Prior to the injury, McRae was known as a burner on the basepaths, but the broken leg put an end to that and severely diminished his ability to play in the outfield. The Reds were fairly loaded in the outfield as well, so they put McRae on the market. In 1973, the Royals traded for him to take advantage of the new DH rule in the American League. This is what we’d call a savvy deal, in hindsight.
McRae hit over .300 for the Royals six times, and was named the Sporting News and AP DH of the Year three times. He nearly won the 1976 batting title over his teammate, George Brett, which would have cost Brett the distinction of being the only player to win a batting title in three different decades (1976, 1980, 1990). The final tally was .3333 to .3326.
This result was not without controversy. McRae grounded out in his final at-bat of the season against the Twins, and Brett hit an inside-the-park homerun to propel him past the finish line. After the game, McRae accused the Twins of throwing the race to Brett by intentionally misplaying his line drive. He alleged they were motivated by racism, something Twins manager Gene Mauch and his players vehemently denied. Only the players involved know for sure, but there’s never been any substantial proof that the Twins had any motivation to favor Brett.
If they did, it might have had less to do with racism, and more to do with McRae’s reputation as a ballplayer. McRae was a fiery competitor, and while he didn’t have speed to burn after his leg injury, that didn’t stop him from running the bases with reckless abandon. I tend to think of DHs of that era as bigger, slower sluggers who usually trudged around the bases at a casual pace. That was not Hal McRae.
The guy was a terror on those white lines, and he is perhaps best remembered for breaking up double plays at second base with “slides” that were closer to tackles you might see in the NFL on a Sunday afternoon. Seriously, there are whole highlight reels of him doing nothing but taking out second basemen and shortstops like they owed him money. I don’t think it won him many friends on opposing teams. The most famous example is when he did it to Yankees second baseman Willie Randolph in Game 3 of the 1977 ALCS.
Even back then, this play was controversial. Randolph complained that McRae could have injured him, and McRae broke out the whole “maybe I’m playing in the wrong era, guys used to be tough” argument. Fortunately, for him, he was playing in the right era. His takeout slides would be illegal today, but back then, nothing came of it beyond bad blood. The Royals and Yankees were already well on their way to being the best rivalry in baseball in the late 70’s and early 80’s, but the slide took it to a whole new level.
Of course, collisions at second were one thing, but McRae’s biggest contributions were still with the bat. He wasn’t a conventional slugger, like many of the best DHs who followed him, but he was a world class hitter. I’ve already mentioned a few of his accolades, but let’s take a look at his career stats.
As you can see, he did a little bit of everything at the plate. The one thing he couldn’t do was hit in the World Series. Or more accurately, he couldn’t guarantee himself a chance to hit in the World Series.
Hal McRae played in a ton of postseason games during his Royals tenure, and overall, he was very good, batting .294/.358/.427, 1 HR, 15 RBI, and a .785 OPS in the playoffs. He acquitted himself well in the 1980 World Series loss to Philadelphia, but he was virtually a nonfactor in the 1985 World Series win over the Cardinals.
Because the AL had the DH and the NL didn’t, MLB came up with a ridiculous rule from 1976-85, which stated that the DH would be used for all World Series games in even years, and not used at all in odd years. I don’t know of any team or fanbase claiming that they lost a World Series because of this DH rule, but it definitely gave an advantage to one league over the other, depending on what year it was.
More than that, it had to be a bummer for a guy like McRae. He was an integral part of the Royals’ success, but because he was a liability in the outfield, Kansas City had no choice but to sit him. They weren’t going to bench Steve Balboni’s power at first base, and the outfield was composed of quality hitters with superior defensive skills. As such, McRae only appeared as a pinch hitter in the series, going 1-3.
Fortunately, MLB changed the rule the following year. From 1986 to the introduction of the universal DH, the designated hitter played for both sides when the AL was the home team, and pitchers hit when the NL was at home. The same rule was adopted for regular season games when the interleague play was introduced in 1997. It was never a perfect compromise, but it was better than what came before.
But for the great Hal McRae, it was a year too late.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. If you must complain about the DH’s existence, now is your chance to do it. But I’d prefer it if you’d leave a comment about your favorite DH or Hal McRae instead.
Jack Cust! I have no idea why,..probably because he toiled in the minors for so long and then got called up and hit a bunch of bombs out of nowhere. The perfect Oakland A.
I just can't get Gates Brown out of my head! I assume he was after the DH rule, 'cause I seem to recall he was never anything BUT a DH (nor could he play any other position.....literally)! He was huge, and just not coordinated, I guess, to play in the field!