The universal DH, for all of its uniformity, practicality and Shohei Ohtani, saddens a small few of us, for it eliminates one of the game’s underappreciated elements: pitchers hitting, or not hitting, which, for 150 years, has provided great statistics, stories and smiles.
Yes, we still have the amazing Ohtani, but he doesn’t count as a hitting pitcher because he’s too good, as was Babe Ruth. They are/were two-way players — as is, on a lower level, the Los Angeles Angels‘ Michael Lorenzen, who in 2019 became the first player since Ruth in 1921 to hit a homer, get the victory and play the field in the same game. “I have a baseball card with only me and Babe Ruth on it,” Lorenzen said. “It doesn’t get any cooler than that.”
And yes, a pitcher could bat in 2022 if, say, a game goes 18 innings, a team has no position players left, and a position player gets hurt. A pitcher would have to…
