Every baseball fan, young and old, can agree that the game is not the same as it was 50 years ago; whether it is for better or for worse, is up to you. The change in the style of play can be directly attributed to the attitude of the average baseball fan. The majority of baseball fans don't want to see games when the winning team scores three runs off sac flies, they want to see games ending in scores like 10-9 where the 50 HR hitter blasts three out of the ball park.

Teams pay specific players to hit home runs because that is what people go to the park for. The strikeout totals for the league in 2009 were upward of 33,000. This is about how many strikeouts amassed during the entire decade of the 1920's. Players just don't care as much about striking out because they're being paid to hit home runs. For example, if you're averaging 40 HR's and 100 RBI's in the past four years like Adam Dunn is, the 175+ strikeout totals don't get in the way of the paycheck. This is why the DH position is so important in baseball. Why do you think people take steroids and HGH? To hit more home runs. So why doesn't the NL have the designated hitting position? It makes no sense. High schools, colleges, and now the minor leagues are universally playing with the DH because they understand that's where the game has been heading for years now. Why can't the NL?

Without the presence of the DH in the NL, it creates an unnecessary dynamic in inter-league games. People who generally favor the DH discrepancy between leagues can argue that it adds a more strategic feature to the inter-league games. Yes this is true but...does that really take precedence over the health of pitchers? The game has become increasingly specialized in the past 20 years, and will only continue to become even more specialized now that the lower levels of baseball are using the DH, further limiting the pitchers' exposure to hitting. If pitchers aren't training to hit or run the base-paths, and then all the sudden, they get to the big leagues and are forced to run the bases in a meaningless inter-league game, their chances of being injured are greatly increased...Three words-->Chien Meng Wang.

So what's my message to the MLB? Think ahead and adapt now.