Democrats favor the Designated Hitter rule

Tim Penn links to this paper by Christopher Zorn and Jeff Gill. Here’s the abstract:

Since its introduction in 1973, major league baseball’s designated hitter (DH) rule has been the subject of continuing controversy. Here, we investigate the political and socio–demographic determinants of public opinion toward the DH rule, using data from a nationwide poll conducted during September 1997. Our findings suggest that it is in fact Democrats, not Republicans, who tend to favor the DH. In addition, we find no effect for respondents’ proximity to American or National League teams, though older respondents were consistently more likely to oppose the rule.

My first thought is: this is amusing but why is it in a top political science journal? But, reading the article, I realize that it indeed has more general implications. In particular, if we can make the assumption that causality only goes in one direction here–that a change in the view on the designated hitter will not affect one’s political preferences–then this is a clean study, a way of estimating the coherence of political ideology into non-political areas.

Also, the tables should be graphs. (Do we really need to know that a coefficient estimate is 0.707 with s.e. of 0.660, etc etc???) The one graph that is there, Figure 1, looks pretty goofy on its own, but it would look fine as one of a set of many comparisons.

One other thing: on page 198 they state that “Republicans are no more or less likely to support the DH rule than are political independents.” But looking at the table, Republicans are less likely to support the DH. The difference is not statistically significant but I wouldn’t call it zero. Most striking to me here is the huge difference between men and women (or, more precisely, that subset of women who are interested in baseball).

Personally, I’ve always thought the DH rule was silly (despite growing up as an Orioles fan) but Bill James made a good argument that it leads to better baseball, since you’re no longer wasting 1/9 of the plate appearances–not a trivial amount of time–on lame bunt attempts.

8 thoughts on “Democrats favor the Designated Hitter rule

  1. The DH makes the game more interesting for the first few innings, and less interesting (because there are fewer contingencies to deal with) in the last few innings. It's a mixed bag. Maybe Democrats tend to leave games earlier.

  2. "The difference is not statistically significant but I wouldn't call it zero."

    If a difference is not statistically significant, then it might, in fact, be zero.

  3. "My first thought is: this is amusing but why is it in a top political science journal?"

    I'd stick to your first thoughts on the matter. The paper is in a good journal merely because Zorn and Gill are relatively prominent and well connected in the discipline.

    Said paper would have never even merited review had it been written by, say, me (a 2nd year graduate student).

  4. Different,

    I agree that it might be zero. I just wouldn't say it is zero.

    Tell it,

    I dunno–top political science journals reject my submissions all the time. On the other hand, there is limited space in journals so it could be that the equivalent submission by you could get rejected. But if you send it to me, I'd be happy to post it on the blog!

  5. AG —

    Thanks for the comments; I find it impossible to quibble with any of them. For what it's worth, the original version of the paper (available in one iteration here) included a selection-type model to address the fact that not everyone made it past the "screening" question; that part was taken out, at the advice of the reviewers.

    Also, to TILII: The paper (with the same two authors) was rejected from most of the good journals in the (sub)field; in many cases, those rejections were without review. We submitted it to QJPS as a candidate for their "Mis-Qs" section (see the March, 2006 Note from the editors), for which we thought it was appropriate.

  6. Personally, I've always thought the DH rule was silly (despite growing up as an Orioles fan) but Bill James made a good argument that it leads to better baseball, since you're no longer wasting 1/9 of the plate appearances–not a trivial amount of time–on lame bunt attempts.

    Andrew: apparently you've never watched the Minnesota Twins (DH OPS in 2007: 684; AL average for the position is 780).

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