The First DH

April 6, 1973. Opening Day at Fenway Park, bases loaded, two outs in the top of the first, and Ron Blomberg walked up to the plate for the New York Yankees to make history. He didn't get a hit. He didn't even swing the bat. He just stood there, took five pitches from Boston ace Luis Tiant, and became the first designated hitter to bat in Major League Baseball history.

That's it. That's the whole revolutionary moment. A walk.

Why the Game Needed Fixing

Baseball in the late 1960s had a scoring problem. Pitching had gotten so dominant -- 1968 was "The Year of the Pitcher", when the American League as a whole hit something like .230 -- that the sport lowered the mound and shrank the strike zone just to get offense breathing again. It helped some. It didn't fix everything, and pitchers hitting was still a nightly parade of automatic outs.

Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley had been pushing a fix for years: let a hitter bat in the pitcher's spot and leave the pitcher on the mound where he belonged. On January 11, 1973, AL owners finally voted him a win, 8-4, adopting the designated hitter as a three-year experiment. Three reasons drove it: more offense, a longer runway for aging sluggers who couldn't field anymore, and -- the one nobody says out loud in Cooperstown -- more butts in seats. (The National League wanted no part of it. That standoff lasted 49 years.)

Yankees manager Ralph Houk didn't have to look far for a player who fit the new rule perfectly -- Blomberg was sitting right there on his bench heading into the 1973 season. A former No. 1 overall pick with a genuinely good left-handed swing, Blomberg also carried chronic leg injuries that turned him into a defensive liability everywhere he stood. Houk didn't need Blomberg's glove. He needed his bat. The new rule let him have it without the rest.

Two Outs, Bases Loaded

Houk batted Blomberg sixth. Matty Alou doubled with two outs already on the board, Bobby Murcer walked, Graig Nettles walked to load the bases, and up came Blomberg -- the first man in history to trot to the plate with "DH" next to his name on a lineup card.

Tiant never let him swing. Five pitches -- four balls and a called strike -- and Blomberg trotted to first while Alou crossed home with the game's first run. An RBI on a walk. No hit, no at-bat, not even contact -- and still the answer to a trivia question that's outlived every player who was on that field that day.

(Blomberg wasn't the only DH working that afternoon, for what it's worth. Every AL team fielded one that Opening Day -- Baltimore's Terry Crowley, Minnesota's Tony Oliva, all of them. Blomberg just happened to play in the game with the earliest first pitch, 1:53 p.m. Eastern. History by a freakin' scheduling quirk as much as anything else.)

Blomberg got his actual hit two innings later, a broken-bat single, finishing the day 1-for-3 with the walk. Not that it mattered to the final score. Thurman Munson and the rest of the lineup couldn't keep up with Boston, and Carlton Fisk -- not Blomberg -- ended up owning the box score, going deep twice, including a grand slam, for six RBI. Boston won 15-5. The most historically significant plate appearance of the day happened inside a blowout nobody in the Bronx wanted to remember.

I thought I was basically a designated pinch-hitter, and I never, ever thought it was going to last.

Turns out it lasted. Blomberg himself didn't -- hamstrings and knees chased him out of the majors by 1978, a .302 hitter in pinstripes who never got enough at-bats to make a Hall of Fame case. But the walk he drew off Tiant became the answer to one of the sport's most enduring trivia questions, and the bat he carried up to the plate that day sits in Cooperstown even though he never will. (He's made peace with it. "I may have made it into the Hall of Fame through the back door," he's said, "but I'm still there.")

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was the first designated hitter in MLB history?

Ron Blomberg of the Yankees, who batted sixth against the Red Sox on Opening Day, April 6, 1973, at Fenway Park. He walked on five pitches against Luis Tiant with the bases loaded, driving in a run without swinging the bat.

Did Ron Blomberg get a hit in his first at-bat as a designated hitter?

No. His historic plate appearance was a five-pitch walk that drove in a run. He picked up an actual hit -- a broken-bat single -- later in that same game, finishing 1-for-3 with a walk and an RBI.

Why did the American League create the designated hitter rule?

AL owners voted 8-4 on January 11, 1973, to adopt the DH as a three-year trial, aiming to boost sagging offense, extend the careers of aging sluggers who could no longer field, and lift attendance. Oakland A's owner Charlie Finley was the rule's loudest advocate. The National League held out until 2022.

Was Ron Blomberg the only designated hitter to play on April 6, 1973?

No -- every American League team used a DH that Opening Day, including Baltimore's Terry Crowley and Minnesota's Tony Oliva, who hit the first DH home run that night against Oakland. Blomberg is remembered as the first simply because the Yankees-Red Sox game had the earliest start time of the day.

Nobody in that Fenway Park crowd knew they were watching the answer to a question that would outlast every player on the field. Blomberg drew a walk in a game the Yankees lost by ten. Fifty years later, it's still the first thing anyone brings up about him.