I grew up in a National League city (Cincinnati), and I’ve always thought the designated hitter was like replacing jelly with mayo on a PB&J. Why replace a perfectly fine professional athlete with another (often not as athletic) professional for just one part of the game? And frankly, seeing pitchers that rake, like Madison Bumgarner or Mike Leake, is one of my favorite parts of watching baseball. With this in mind, I decided to come up with my Top 5 reasons baseball should abolish the DH, or at the very least, never implement it in the National League.
5) You Get to See Bartolo Colon Hit a Home Run.
If there were a DH in the National League, the glorious event that occurred last week – Bartolo Colon hitting a home run – would have never happened. How many other such events has the world been deprived of since the AL implemented the DH?
4) You Get to See Bartolo Colon Hit a Home Run.
If you’re unfamiliar with Bartolo Colon, he is a 19-year veteran who is listed at 285, which is obviously charitable and is only weighing from the waist down. That weight, however, is not used to hit dingers.
3) You Get to See Bartolo Colon Hit a Home Run.
Bartolo Colon is a pitcher in the Major Leagues who is known to be a bad hitter. And by bad I mean “Has no idea how to hit a moving ball with his bat” (actually, he might not be able to hit it off the tee, either). In 228 at-bats, he has only 21 hits, for a cool .092 batting average. Yet last weekend, he hit a home run!
2) You Get to See Bartolo Colon Hit a Home Run.
After Colon hit his dinger, it took him 30.58 seconds to round the bases, which was second-slowest this year so far and 11th-slowest since 2010. For comparison, Billy Hamilton once rounded the bases in 16.08 seconds on a home run trot. And I suspect Colon was so excited that he was going at his top speed. Yet every one of those 30.58 seconds were glorious.
The one thing in baseball slower than Instant Replay.
1) You Get to See Bartolo Colon Hit a Home Run.
I’ll take 10,000 pitchers striking out badly if in return you give me one Bartolo Colon home run.
The baseball world is a better place with Bartolo Colon batting.
