The Designated Hitter and the 50-Year War Between the Leagues

For 49 years, the two leagues that made up Major League Baseball played by different rules. The American League had a designated hitter. The National League didn't. Same sport, same postseason, same commissioner, two different games. It was the longest-running argument in baseball, and it didn't end until 2022.

The Idea Nobody Wanted

The designated hitter was not a new idea when it finally happened. Connie Mack, one of the most respected managers in baseball history, suggested something like it as early as 1906. John Heydler, the president of the National League, formally proposed it in 1928, arguing that pitchers' at-bats were boring and that fans wanted to see real hitters. The American League rejected it. The idea sat for four decades.

By the late 1960s, offense was in freefall. The 1968 "Year of the Pitcher" had produced historically low batting averages and attendance was declining, especially in the American League. Charlie Finley, the flamboyant owner of the Oakland Athletics, became the DH's loudest champion. Finley was convinced the game needed more offense and that eliminating the pitcher's at-bat was the easiest way to get it.

The International League, a Triple-A minor league, tested the DH in its games starting in 1969. Four other minor leagues followed. The results were encouraging. More hits, more runs, more excitement.

On January 11, 1973, at a joint meeting in Chicago presided over by commissioner Bowie Kuhn, the American League owners voted 8-4 to adopt the designated hitter for a three-year trial. The National League declined. For the first time in the history of major league baseball, the two leagues would play under different rules.

The First DH

On April 6, 1973, Opening Day, Ron Blomberg of the New York Yankees became the first designated hitter in major league history. He came to the plate against Boston Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant with the bases loaded in the first inning. He walked. It was not exactly a thunderclap, but it was the beginning of something permanent.

Yankees coach Elston Howard, the former catcher, had offered Blomberg one piece of advice before the game on how to handle his new role. "Go hit," Howard told him, "and then sit down."

The Split

The three-year trial period ended, and the leagues couldn't agree. The American League wanted to keep the DH. The National League still didn't want it. So they kept playing by different rules.

The AL's reasoning was simple. Offense went up. Attendance went up. The DH added another professional hitter to the lineup, which meant more action and more drama. John Thorn, MLB's official historian, later pointed to the attendance gains as the core justification.

The NL's reasoning was equally simple, and it boiled down to tradition and strategy. Without the DH, every manager faced a decision in the late innings. Leave the pitcher in for his defense or pinch-hit for him to get more offense? The double switch, the sacrifice bunt, the late-inning strategic calculus was all part of National League baseball, and NL fans considered it superior. Sparky Anderson, who won World Series titles in both leagues, once said of managing with the DH, "It stinks. No one knows if I can manage or not."

The National League came close to adopting the DH exactly once. At the owners' meeting in 1980, the vote was five against, four in favor, and three abstentions. The abstentions were counted as no votes, so it failed. One of the abstaining teams was the Philadelphia Phillies. Their general manager, Bill Giles, had been told by owner Ruly Carpenter to vote in favor, but Carpenter was on a fishing trip and couldn't be reached. Giles abstained rather than guess. The Pittsburgh Pirates' general manager had been instructed to vote however the Phillies voted. He abstained too. A fishing trip may have cost the DH 42 years.

Five days after that vote, the St. Louis Cardinals fired the general manager who had led the pro-DH push, and the National League never held another vote on the issue.

The Consequences

The DH reshaped how teams built their rosters. In the American League, a player who could hit but couldn't field, a player who in a previous era would have been out of the game by his early thirties, could now extend his career as a full-time DH. David Ortiz spent the vast majority of his 8,861 career plate appearances as a designated hitter and became one of the most beloved players in baseball history. When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2022, he became the first Cooperstown inductee to have spent more than 70% of his career at DH.

The DH also extended careers for aging stars. Edgar Martinez, Harold Baines, Frank Thomas, Paul Molitor, and others played years longer than they would have otherwise because the position existed. Martinez, who spent most of his career as Seattle's DH, is the reason the annual award for the best DH in each league is now named the Edgar Martinez Award.

The End of the Argument

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted MLB to adopt the universal DH as a temporary health measure, reducing the number of player substitutions during the shortened season. For the first time, both leagues played with the same rules. When the 2021 season returned to normal, the NL dropped the DH again.

Then came the 2022 collective bargaining agreement. As part of the negotiations between MLB and the Players Association, the universal DH was made permanent. The National League adopted the designated hitter for good, ending a 49-year split. The argument was over.

Before the 2022 season, MLB added one more wrinkle. Under what became known informally as the "Shohei Ohtani rule," a starting pitcher could also serve as his team's designated hitter, and could remain in the game as DH even after being relieved on the mound. It was a rule designed for a player who could do something almost nobody else could: pitch like an ace and hit like a cleanup hitter. The DH rule, once created because pitchers couldn't hit, had evolved to accommodate a pitcher who hit better than most position players.