Now, I think I know what you’re thinking… something like, “This controversy is just a really old debate that has been beat to death for half a century but at the same time will never go away.”

But wait.

Pause long enough to consider, is that statement about the DH, or could it just as easily have been said about lighting up Wrigley Field for night games?

If you’re just not old enough, or if you just weren’t “into” baseball that much back then, you might not recall the controversy over installing lights at Wrigley Field. From 1942 (when, what was supposed to be Wrigley’s lights were, instead, donated to the war effort) to 1980, the issue was considered a pointless one to discuss. One faction cited tradition, another cited pragmatic problems with nearby residential areas as close as they were, and another plead for the Cubs to join the rest of baseball in hosting regular night games.

Then, the Tribune Company purchased the Cubs in 1981, and over the next 7 years, the pro-lights/anti-lights debate ensued with passion. Finally, in 1988, middle ground was struck, and to this day, the Cubs play a limited night baseball schedule.

Wrigley got lights.

Eventually, common sense catches up with tradition, just as it generally keeps change at an arm’s length.

The “really old debate” to which you referred? That debate is not this one. That debate, much like “lights or no lights,” was “which one.”

This endeavor means to go deeper than that.

It begins with the fact that the championship process of major league baseball is flawed unlike any other in professional sports…

That is, if you genuinely look at it from a purely logical perspective, the World Series does not so much determine the best team in baseball, as much as it indicates which system (with DH or without) is superior to the other.

And continues that, we’ve only accepted this as long as we have because AL and NL fans to this point mostly had not been willing to concede that the “other side” would never never never give-in…

And finally, the rationale holds that we’ve negotiated much more difficult win-win agreements in the business and political world than this… and, having fully appreciated and embraced all of the above, the public dialogue  leading to a good agreement is a proverbial “piece of cake,” by comparison.

“Okay, but this issue is not as important to the game as, say, the need for a salary cap to make it more likely that smaller markets can compete.”

Point well-taken.

If you start that grassroots crusade, you can count on many of us to sign-up.

But think about it:  if the patient suffers from a heart condition, does that mean you don’t treat the diabetes?

Resolving the salary cap issue involves a higher level of difficulty and complication. A heckuva lot more money is at stake by comparison. It’s not even close.

Resolving this issue is, by far, more easily attained.

I submit to you that the interest in resolving the former is no excuse for ignoring the need to resolve the latter.

Join us.

Participate in this blog by commenting on the pages that interest you, and by helping to review and give your input on the several options illuminated on this site. Talk about this site with your sports fan friends. Tell media people, including talk radio hosts about it.

There is no “money” behind this effort. There is no pre-planned “solution” to be pushed.

Rather, there is just a genuine love for the game, and a desire to see it get better. Let’s do something “grassroots” as baseball fans that’s a real testimony to how we, ourselves, can unite and come to a consensus on a solution.

There will come a time, hopefully sooner instead of later, that people will say, “What were we thinkin?”… a time not unlike what many Chicago fans have experienced since 1988.

And the game of professional baseball in the U.S. will be reunited, ready to flourish like never before.

Welcome to the Unify Baseball Movement. Hope you’ll find it cerebrally-comfortable-enough to stay awhile.

OUR CHARGE TO OUR READERS AND PARTICIPANTS: Allow the writers at this site, if you will, to make the case for ending the DH divide, and join us in brainstorming and evaluating options–one of which, not necessarily mine or necessarily yours, we expect to emerge over time with a consensus of great American and National League fans, so that we all can begin to target and promote (i.e., “build the buzz” for) the reunification season.