Swing the bat, or you ain’t playin’ baseball

So you’re strolling through the neighborhood and here comes a bunch of kids, heading toward the local baseball field. They’ve got bags full of gear and it’s a wonderful scene, but something’s wrong.

One of the kids has his bat, but no glove. What’s the deal?

“I just hit,” he says, somewhat dejectedly. “I don’t play in the field.”

Another kid has his glove, but no bat, and looks a bit sour, as well.

“I’m the pitcher,” he says.

This cuts straight to the argument against the designated hitter, so prominent in the news these days as Major League Baseball ponders the notion of adding it to the National League. Forget everything about strategy, interleague play or the sorry sight of most pitchers trying to hit.

It’s only this: If you play baseball, you do a lot of things. You run, throw, catch and hit. It’s the beauty of it, you see. Every one of those endeavors is sheer delight. You’re judged by how many of them you do well. And if you’re somehow prevented from doing one of those things, you’re not playing the sport as it was so brilliantly designed.

And that’s just a crime.

This column offered the perfect solution months ago, and it still applies. Forget the 15 high-salaried hitters who need their precious DH protection. Expand team rosters from 25 to 27 players — finally allowing managers to have a proper bench alongside their inflated pitching staffs — and hand the players’ union 60 new jobs. It seems obvious, though, that the game has evolved far past the point of eliminating the DH altogether.

I’ll even concede that the DH serves its purpose in the American League, allowing fans to watch aging stars who can’t do much else but hit. But this whole bit about “a different set of rules” — nonsense. Out on the field, the game is played exactly the same way in both leagues. Only the nature of the batting order comes into play, and it’s still nine at a time.

Moreover, it’s invigorating to have these back-and-forth discussions. It’s the best of all worlds for baseball, a debate with no resolution and none really necessary. Commissioner Rob Manfred would be making a terrible mistake if he tries to convince National League ownership to give up the game’s most crucial tradition. As KNBR’s Brian Murphy wrote on Twitter, “He will go down as the Worst Commissioner in Baseball History.” It would stamp Manfred and the National League owners as nauseatingly progressive, with no clear notion of consequence.

Here’s some more nonsense: recent speculation about the National League adopting the DH as early as 2017. That’s just some reckless Internet talk gone wild. Check with the real insiders and they’ll tell you such radical change would take many years to implement.

Undoubtedly, with the current collective bargaining agreement due to expire in December, the DH will be part of the backroom discussions. But there’s so much more to talk about: domestic-violence policies, shortening the schedule, damaging slides into second base, streamlining the replay process, ending the kind of regional-television squabbles that find two-thirds of the Dodgers’ market blacked out.

Important issues, all of them. Certainly more relevant than taking pitchforks to the game’s integrity.

New look at Cal

Tony Franklin struck people as a cool brand of offensive coordinator at Cal, a humble sort who enjoyed strolling the streets of Berkeley in anonymity because “nobody knew who I was, and didn’t care.” He and head coach Sonny Dykes cooked up a high-powered offense that sent quarterback Jared Goff on a thrilling, record-breaking path. But when Cal can’t win the big conference games over a three-year period — that’s 0-12 against USC, UCLA, Stanford and Oregon — you get a sense that the “Bear Raid” isn’t such a big puzzle. A good man, yes, but also time for a change ... Maybe I’m missing something with Chip Kelly, who certainly came off as a charming sort in his introductory media sessions, but just looking at that guy, I don’t trust him ... Question: If Kobe Bryant gets hurt — the story of his life over the past three seasons — does the Western Conference All-Star Game starter become Zaza Pachulia (hold on, I’m gagging), who had the next-highest voting total? Not necessarily. Commissioner Adam Silver picks the roster replacement, and the starting assignment falls on the head coach. That will be Gregg Popovich, and you’d bet heavily on Draymond Green ... Sorry to have omitted a worthy name, Kevin Johnson, in last Sunday’s evaluation of all-time point guards. Readers also wondered why they didn’t see Pete Maravich’s name. Much like Jerry West, he was technically a point guard but known mostly as a shooter. Yes, Maravich’s ballhandling bordered on the mystical, but this is a man who averaged 44 points a game for three straight seasons at LSU and at least 25 during five NBA seasons. He wasn’t much of a leader, never getting out of the first round with his Atlanta Hawks teams in the early ’70s. He belongs in a shooting-guard discussion ... For now — don’t put too much stock in it — there are decent relations among DeMarcus Cousins, Rajon Rondo and coach George Karl in Sacramento (still not much love for Seth Curry, averaging just 2.6 shots per game), and the current standings would have the Kings seeded eighth for the playoffs. “Me, I’ve never said anything about the eighth spot,” Rondo told NBA.com. “I’m trying to get to five or six. Who wants to play Golden State in the first round?”