"This has to be the last season in which this system is allowed to exist in baseball, because the out-of-date rules about the DH now affect the integrity of the season and the schedule more than all the interleague baseball does. Your team is supposed to be your team."
Has to be?
Or what?
California will slide into the ocean?
"Before interleague play, the use, or non-use, of the DH only came into play in the World Series."
Regular season interleague play started in 1997. Fifteen years ago.
"For a long time, that seemed to be a bit of a novelty, teams only employing the DH in the American League park for two or three or four games in October. Only now there are all these interleague games every season. Why? Because baseball gets a spike in attendance out of them, that's why. I get it. This is about business."
Ummm ... why should the NL adopt the DH?
"And if there are two teams added to the playoffs, that will be about business, too."
Well, since you're the decider, why don't you tell us if two teams will be added to the playoffs?
"But this is about the business of baseball today, and I don't care what the records say about how the American League usually does against the National League in interleague baseball."
AL teams typically pound NL teams.
Still not sure what that has to do with anything.
Still not sure why you think the NL should adopt the DH.
"The simpler solution is to give everybody the DH, have everybody play the same rules the American League has been playing for years, no harm, no foul, we move on."
You, sir, are a dope.
"This has to be the last year where someone like Vlad Guerrero of the Orioles has to basically take a furlough from being a regular player when the Orioles play interleague ball in a National League park. Or David Ortiz of the Red Sox, the second-most important hitter on a team that thinks it has a chance to win the AL East and maybe the World Series this year, has a great season disrupted and not because of injury or a slump, because of the rules."
Again with the "has to be."
But this is really about David Ortiz, isn't it?
Lupica has a diary on his bedside table and he logs the at-bats of David Ortiz every day. When David Ortiz has zero hits, Lupica can't maintain an erection and the tension builds in the Lupica household. For this reason, Lupica has a sudden personal interest in the consequences of interleague play.
I apologize for being so vulgar, but it's the only plausible explanation.
It also partially explains why Lupica loves to refer to David Ortiz as "Big Papi."
"To get Ortiz back in the batting order the other night against the Phillies, Adrian Gonzalez - who IS the Red Sox's best hitter - had to go play rightfield for the second time in his career."
Lupica is completely nuts.
Adrian Gonzalez didn't have to play rightfield. They didn't have to get Ortiz back in the lineup.
It's maybe ironic that John Lackey had the only RBI for the Red Sox in that particular game?
I'm not really understanding what Lupica is getting at.
After 17 years of regular season interleague play ... after 40 years of the DH ... did Lupica just figure out that the AL teams often have to bench one of their big bats when they plan in NL parks?
More to the point, it's unclear to me why this particular incident stands out as the straw that broke the camel's back.
I mean, the Yankees benched the MVP in the 2009 World Series.
"Did the Red Sox lose two of three to the lowly San Diego Padres at home using the DH last week? You bet they did. Then they lost two of three to the Pirates in Pittsburgh and used Ortiz solely as a pinch-hitter. So maybe they would have lost those two of three anyway. But they should not have had to try. This is a system that has gone on for far too long and needs to be changed now, and the only way it gets changed is if everybody who loves baseball starts to make some noise about it."
Wow.
The beloved Red Sox had a bad week and Lupica wants to change the rules of baseball.
I mean, that's exactly what's happening in this man's mind.
"By the way? The Yankees would feel the same way about this if Alex Rodriguez were their full-time DH. But A-Rod is still a full-time position player at third base, at least for now, and this has been a season when a lot of guys have DH-ed for the Yankees. That isn't a team constructed around interleague play, that is just the way the Yankees have been constructed, period."
Remember when Lupica said ARod was going to move to CF or 1B? Still hasn't happened. Yeah, Lupica is really a dope.
By the way? [sic] Just exactly how do "the Yankees" feel about this? I haven't heard anyone from "the Yankees" give an opinion. But I'm sure "the Yankees" want to play their DH in NL parks. So Lupica's assertion is downright bizarre.
Jorge Posada is the Yankees' DH.
Jorge Posada hit .391 in June.
Why would the Yankees prefer to send Freddy Garcia to the plate instead of Jorge Posada?
"They are surely going to add a couple of teams to the playoffs and they might cut the schedule down from 162 games, and might move a team to the American League so we have leagues of 15 and 15, and go ahead and try to figure how interleague baseball is going to work with THAT."
It's a bad idea, but you still haven't explained why the NL should adopt the DH.
"I will give them all of that. But they have to give me something back. They've got to give me one set of rules for all of baseball, once and for all."
I know the "have tos" and the "give mes" sound like literary license.
But Lupica might be truly delusional. A Yankee-hating, Mets-and-Red-Sox-loving psychopath who thinks he's important because he once talked to Joe Torre.
After reading this self-absorbed nonsense, I really think Lupica may have lost his mind.
Lupica thinks the commissioner of baseball is asking him for his opinion.
Lupica thinks he's the commissioner of baseball.
Lupica thinks "the Yankees" are anti-DH because "the Yankees" were monitoring the Boston/Philly series and diabolically grinning when Adrian Gonzalez had to play one whole game in right field.
Lupica thinks the last 100 years of NL rules were a conspiracy to force Adrian Gonzalez to play one whole game in right field. A Yankee/NL/Bud Selig conspiracy which hands the AL East to the Evil Yankees.
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