Is the Designated Hitter Ethical? A Philosophical View

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Disclaimer: This was written as a philosophy paper. Many of the baseball arguments have been simplified for the sake of not bowling over my egghead professor with baseball terminology, or to enhance the impact of the argument.

I'm aware of this. Feel free to criticize, but don't lambast me over something that I left out because I didn't think my professor would know what I was trying to say. I hope the sports fan segment of the population finds this as interesting as I did.

The Morality of the Designated Hitter
A Philosophical View of Baseball’s Great Debate

Is the designated hitter rule ethical? Since the rule’s inception in 1973, it has been the subject of endless debate between those who view it as the natural evolution of baseball and those who debunk it as a gimmick and a detriment to the sport.

While there have been a great many of arguments about this particular facet of America’s favorite pastime, as far as I know there have been no debates about the ethical merits (or lack thereof) the DH.

In the pages to follow, I will attempt to offer a philosophical look at one of baseball’s greatest arguments, and establish once and for all that the designated hitter is an unethical rule that has no place in baseball.
   
Major League Baseball Rule 6.10, as the law is officially dubbed, allows teams in the American League to designate a player to bat in place of the pitcher. The pitcher is nearly universally the worst hitter on a baseball team, and this rule allows the pitcher to be replaced with a stronger hitter.

The rule was enacted as a response to the offensively challenged baseball of the early '70s, in which runs were being scored at a lower rate than ever before and the league was looking for a way to increase the scoring in the game.

By removing the “easy out” that the pitcher presents in the batting order, and putting a competent hitter in his place, it makes task of getting the required three outs in an inning much more difficult, thereby increasing the run production.
   
In the past 35 years, the American League has ingrained the designated hitter into baseball’s culture, as at least two generations of fans have been raised on the game with the rule in effect.

So now we arrive at the part of the paper where I begin to argue the thesis: the DH is an unethical rule which cheapens the contributions of both pitchers and hitters, and is generally a cheat of the strategic aspects of the sport.
   
Baseball, to begin with, is the most individual of team sports. A player scoring a goal in hockey will often have done little more than bang the puck into an already vacated net, having watched as his teammate drew the defense to him with skillful stickhandling before sliding him the puck at the last moment.

But a second baseman who comes to bat and hits a double into the gap in left field has done all of this by himself: what happened to the batters before him is ultimately insignificant.

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