If you’re a baseball fan and watch it on the big-league level, you know there’s one significant difference between the National and the American leagues. That difference is that the pitchers bat in the National League, but in the American League, they do not. MLB made it that way in the early 1970s.
In the American League, the manager can insert a designated hitter into the lineup instead of the pitcher. Ostensibly, this is the hitter that the manager has assigned to hit in the pitcher’s stead, which is why we give the position that name.
