New
York Times’ columnist William Rhoden had a nice line the other day writing, “If
baseball ever dies, the cause of death will be complications caused by
tradition.” Rhoden questions the wisdom
of pitchers hitting, and so do I.
Last
week, the Cardinals lost their ace starter Adam Wainwright for the season with
a torn Achilles suffered when batting.
And the week before that, Max Scherzer, aka the World’s Richest Pitcher,
jammed his thumb while batting. In case
you were wondering, Wainwright is a career .198 hitter while Scherzer clocks in
at .171.
In
the 1960s the White Sox had a pitcher by the name of Bruce Howard; for Howard,
hitting looked to be one part mystery, one part nuisance. Hence, the career .116 batting average. At least Howard wasn’t Bob Buhl, who went 0
for 70 one year.
When
I need a rationalization for hating the Cubs, all I need to do is think of
their announcers, who are fond of labelling anyone as “purists” for the sin of
questioning certain changes. Dislike the
growing number of night games at Wrigley Field or the installation of the
monstrosity of a video board? Why, you
purist, you. Don’t like interleague play? Guess what that makes you?
Oh,
but when it comes to the differences between the NL and AL, you’d think the
pitcher hitting constitutes the 11th Commandment. New Cubs’ manager John Maddon likes to bat his
pitcher eighth on occasion, but guess what?
He’s still a pitcher. That’s something
only a purist could love.
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