Wed, Oct 22, 2003 page20

• Baseball waffles over the DH while pitchers look silly

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  We are now in the silly season, when baseball changes the rules smack in the middle of the World Series.

  For the next three games, the Yankees and the Marlins will do without the designated hitter. If it's Tuesday, it must be National League ball.

  Only baseball -- dear, goofy baseball -- would have two sets of rules, one for the American League, one for the National League.

  You don't exactly see the rules fluctuate in the NFL. Everybody on all teams must tuck in their shirts, brush their teeth and conform to the same rules at all times.

  You don't see Shaq shooting free throws against Eastern teams but getting the ball out of bounds against Western teams in the NBA.

  In the anarchic world of baseball, however, a team can be constructed with a Nick Johnson and a Jason Giambi sharing first base and designated hitter all season, then as a reward for getting to the World Series, the Yankees must make a choice when they play on the road.

  The choice is an easy one, Joe Torre said Sunday night after the Yankees tied the World Series at one game apiece, before the players embarked for three straight night games in Miami, starting Tuesday night.

  Giambi is "the guy that we really need to have in the middle of the lineup, whether he's getting a walk, whether he's getting a base hit," Torre said.

  It did not matter that Johnson had three hits and is a superior first baseman to Giambi. Baseball forces the Yankees to revise the offense and defense that evolved over a 162-game season.

  This ambivalence goes back to 1973, when the American League, in search of excitement, unleashed the designated hitter.

  The National League, of course, plays real baseball, in which pitchers must hit and run and managers must make hard choices about pitching changes.

  It was fun to see an athlete like Kerry Wood of the Cubs bash a home run on his own behalf in the seventh game of the National League Championship Series. Josh Beckett of the Marlins, who will hit Tuesday night in his own park, has had two hits in the postseason and Dontrelle Willis, the Marlins' engaging rookie left-hander, batted .241 during the regular season. That's the way the game should be played.

  Unfortunately, the minor leagues and the American League encourage pitchers to not become complete baseball players.

  "It's funny to see pitchers hit," said Derek Jeter, with a smirk after Sunday night's game.

  It's even funnier to see Roger Clemens hit. That has happened exactly 20 times in his American League career, except for the unavoidable foray into interleague games, in which Clemens has four hits.

  Wednesday night the big fellow gets to hit again, in what is almost surely his last major league start.

  The comedy is watching some pitchers try to hit in the National League part of the World Series. The melodrama comes when respected American League regulars must sit out games on the road in late October.

  For the first decade, baseball alternated the rule by years, meaning that a stalwart like Ken Singleton, who helped the Baltimore Orioles reach the 1983 World Series, wound up with two pinch-hitting calls, walking once.

  They changed the rule in 1986, to allow teams to play by their league rules at home. This has caused American League mainstays like Don Baylor, Chili Davis, and Cecil Fielder to disappear down the rabbit hole in the World Series.
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