The National League is the only league left anywhere that pitchers still bat.  While I'm of a younger generation, I still consider myself a big time historical baseball aficionado.  And I can see both sides of the argument, strategy and purity and tradition vs. offense and entertainment, I get it.  That being said its really stupid and boring to watch pitchers bat.

I say this coming from the perspective of a Yankees fan, American League baseball fan and as someone who has known nothing but the DH in the AL growing up.  And to that #### Steve Phillips (are the Seattle Mariners going to rally back and make the playoffs this year Stevie?) over at ESPN who talks about the "tradition of the game," I've got news for you.

If baseball stuck to tradition Chien-Ming Wang wouldn't never gotten hurt running the bases.  Know how I know how?  Because if baseball stuck to tradition and never installed inter-league play, American and National League teams wouldn't meet until the World Series in October and hence Wang never would've been running the bases because the Yankees wouldn't have been playing in Houston, but maybe in Arlington you know against a team in their own league who they've still yet to play this season! 

Does this come off a bit as sour grapes?  Sure.  Could Wang have gotten hurt as easily running sprints in the outfield warming up?  Possibly.  Say what you will of how fluky the injury was or how asinine it is that anybody would come up lame like that just simply running the bases, but the point is Wang should've never been on the bases to begin with.

I've voiced my opinion in previous posts about my feelings on instant replay and the wild card and while NL owners stick with the pitcher batting for financial reasons, I have no use for it as a fan.

Nobody wants to see a pitcher bat in the All-Star Game, but it can still happen in an NL park.  Sure it makes things interesting in the 6th or 7th inning strategy wise, but in the 3rd or 4th inning with runners at the corners and two outs, nobody in their right minds wants to see the pitcher come up to the plate.  One could even argue that in a close game in the AL, the manager of the team with the lead has to make more of a decision strategically.  Do I leave my starter in to face the power hitting DH or do I go to my pen, or do I go to my pen because there's basically no easy automatic outs in the lineup.  In the NL if I'm a manager with the lead and the pitcher comes up, there's no way my starter is coming out, so I sit there and say ok go strike 'em out kid! 

If you enjoyed watching Billy Crystal batting in Spring Training, then knock yourself out, because like him most pitchers are an automatic out, but the sad thing is these guys aren't 60 years old either.

Super-agent Scott Boras likes to pull out all of these fancy charts and numbers concerning all of his clients, especially A-Rod.  However when it comes to his numbers, he seems to be using the same so called "math" Karl Rove said he had concerning the 2006 mid-term elections. 

Myth # 1: Before A-Rod came to the Yankees they only drew over three million fans, with A-Rod they've suddenly drawn over four million.  True the Yankees have drawn over four million with A-Rod, but attendance is up everywhere in Major League Baseball.  For 2007 MLB set an overall attendance record of 79,502,524, a 4.5 % increase over the 2006 season which was at the time also a record breaking 76,042,787.  Average attendance for MLB during the 2007 season was 32,785 also the largest in MLB history.  In fact the overall MLB attendance record has been shattered every year for the past four years.  A-Rod has been a Yankee for the past four years, but the rise in attendance has to do more with the increased popularity of baseball over A-Rod's impact. 

To further my point, eight teams set new attendance records in 2007.  Ten teams pulled in more than three million, 16 more garnered 2.5 million and 24 others brought in over two million people.  In addition six clubs averaged over 40,000 per game, while 12 teams averaged 35,000 per game.  Even the minor leagues saw a huge spike once again.  To give you an example the team from my area, the Tri-City ValleyCats, a short-season Single-A affiliate of the Houston Astros based in Troy, N.Y. just outside of Albany, who finished dead last with the league's worst overall record, drew a franchise record 136,809 fans in 2007.

Myth # 2: Team performance has improved as a result of A-Rod.  Yes A-Rod has been a part of some great ball clubs, was even the driving force of why the Yankees got to the playoffs this season.  In A-Rod's last season with the Seattle Mariners in 2000 they won 91 games and reached the ALCS.  However in 2001 the M's won an AL regular season record 116 games, reaching the ALCS.  And while they didn't make the playoffs, they still won 93 games each of the next two seasons while A-Rod was still languishing in Texas.

Speaking of Texas, they won only two more games with A-Rod there in 2001 and lost 89 or more games in every season he played there.  In 2004 the year after A-Rod left, the Rangers won 89 games.

In 2003 the Yankees won 101 games, won the A.L. Pennant reaching the World Series.  In 2004 with A-Rod they won 101 games and lost in the ALCS.  In 2005 the Yankees won 95 games and a season series tie-breaker with Boston which game them the division and they lost in the ALDS.  In 2006 they won 97 games and again lost in the ALDS.  In the 2007 season they won 94 games, finished as a Wild Card and once again lost in the ALDS.

No one is denying A-Rod has a marketable quality to attract even the most casual of fans.  And more of his team's failures have had to do with the fact that he can't pitch and neither can anyone else on his team.  A-Rod is a big part of the attendance and winning, just not in the way Scott Boras would make one believe.

Lately there's been this notion of how Roger Clemens' package deal somehow disgraces the mystique of the New York Yankees.  To detractors such as David Wells and Phil Garner, I say go out and get your own contract negotiated in that fashion.  I don't even necessarily bash the Yankees for doing this because imagine if they hadn't accomodated him and then lost Clemens to Boston or Houston?

There's no mistake the mystique left the Yankees when the ball left the bat of Luis Gonzalez in November of 2001.  They started going after guys who were bigger than the team.  The Yankees replaced two of their classier guys in Tino Martinez and Paul O'Neill with Jason Giambi and his steroid problems and Raul Mondesi and his attitude problems.  They made a foolish trade of Ted Lilly for Jeff Weaver and gave a boatload of money to Jose Contreras solely so that Boston couldn't get him.

In 2004 they essentailly sold their heart and soul, allowing character guys in Andy Pettitte and Clemens to go, while dealing for overpaid, oft-injured, headcase, mal-content Kevin Brown.  Sure A-Rod might be the best player in baseball, but the trading for him went against the grain of the 90's Yankees who weren't about the super-star.  That season the Giambi signing, Brown trade, not signing Pettitte and Clemens and trading for Javier Vazquez instead of Curt Schilling came back to bite them in the end. 

Before 2005 they again let a clutch pitcher in El Duque walk away, the same El Duque who dominated the Red Sox in a relief apperance in the playoffs that year allowing the White Sox to sweep.  They signed Jaret Wright who had red flags all over the place and was another oft-injured headcase.  Signed and overpaid for Carl Pavano, again another oft-injured headcase, just so Boston wouldn't get him.  And traded for and overpaid the moody Randy Johnson, one year too late.  Perhaps the biggest move they didn't make was signing Carlos Beltran to be their centerfielder for the next decade.

When one looks at this season and the Clemens deal, ask yourself this: If the Yankee mystique was so important, why then did they sign Kei Igawa to $46 million?  Igawa's main problem is gripping the ball and getting a feel for the mound!  Really, don't you think that your genious scouting department would've picked up on those two things before anything else?  Anyone who doesn't believe that deal was done solely for marketing purposes to Japan and to compete with Boston's signing of their own Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, you're fooling yourself.  That move right there, which was obviously not a baseball move, spits in the face of Yankee mystique and tradition! 

This shift from the 1990's Yankees to now reeks of sheer sellout.