TOWER GROVE • When it comes to covering baseball and describing injuries, it always helps to know the code words and how to translate them. Say it with me now: A strain is actually a tear. A "sports hernia" is often an abdominal strain, which is a tear. A bruise is a contusion. And a laceration is a cut. There are all these synonyms out there used to soften or show-off when it comes to describing an injury.

It helps everyone when we just call it what it is. A duck is a duck so call it a duck.

And so it is with the recent reports about radical realignment in Major League Baseball that has earwormed its way into ballpark discussions this week. Let's call it what it is:

Perpetual interleague play.

ESPN's senior baseball writer Buster Olney first broke the story this past weekend about realignment considerations and two 15-team leagues with his prescient story at ESPN.com. He called it "rolling" interleague play during a radio interview. Other reports have ignored the reality altogether, romanced instead by the radical notion that 30 can be evenly divided by two to arrive at 15. By any name, this duck is still a quack. By splitting the 30 MLB clubs into two even leagues baseball invites perpetual interleague play. It will always be present. There is no way to avoid it. Each weekend, for example, the leagues will pair up two teams into seven series. But there will always be one leftover team in each league. Those teams will have to play each other or take the days off.

This isn't that big of deal in other professional sports. Football does it. The National Hockey League does it. The NBA does it.

Of course, the Western Conference in basketball doesn't erase the three-point from its games. And the AFC in football doesn't prohibit the use of punts. The cross-league competition works because the leagues have the same rules.

Baseball's leagues do not.

There are many reasons why this notion of radical realignment and dissolution of the divisions in baseball won't work. I talked to a former player on Monday and he described the fact that without a division title to play for the view from players and fans will be different if the only "title" they can get is the World Series. Joe Sheehan, of SI.com, called it the "hope and faith" element on Bernie Miklasz's radio show this afternoon and points out that a team striving to finish fourth or third in a division has an easier time selling that to its fans than trying to suggest it could finish 11th or 12th this season. (St. Louis Blues know this to be true.) Deleting the divisions from baseball will have repercussions, from practical to financial to even silly:

-- Bona fide rivals like the Cubs and Cardinals or the Red Sox and Yankees could be limited to six games against each other every season if the unbalanced schedule is eliminated along with the divisions. Rivalries would suffer or, as in the case with the Cardinals and Brewers or Cardinals and Reds, never develop. Familiarity breeds contempt.

-- All the trouble that, say, the Toronto Blue Jays have cracking that playoff nut because of the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox above them would now be shared with Oakland, Minnesota, Texas and whatever NL team makes the leap to the American League in this scenario. (UPDATE: On Nov. 17, Houston was announced as the team that will make the move.)

-- There wouldn't be "Division Title" pennants to hang at ballparks and decorate walls, and there wouldn't a reason to hold unveiling ceremonies. Right now there are eight teams that get to paint a little merit badge on their ballpark each year. The reported scenario would leave two teams who would get to plaster a logo on their ballpark, unless some team is going to put up a "We're the 4th Seed" pennant.

-- Not to mention, they couldn't sell Wild Card or Division Title t-shirts and hats. Aren't those money-makers in baseball? That locker room t-shirt that says "Second Seed" doesn't really move the product.

Those are all small things - bothersome details - compared to the $12-million elephant about to sit on the National League.

The DH.

If baseball is to embrace perpetual interleague play then baseball will have to confront its Designated Hitter Problem. The DH represents a financial issue, a team-building issue and a union issue for baseball.

American League teams spend heartily to fill that offense-only role, while NL teams veer more toward versatility or pitching. The Chicago White Sox signed Adam Dunn to a four-year, $56-million deal to be a DH. In Detroit, Victor Martinez signed a four-year, $50-million deal to be a DH. The DH isn't going anywhere from the AL because the DH is a valuable job that the players' association will defend. It tends to rate a higher salary and it does prolong careers.

Back in 2006, then Colorado manager Clint Hurdle had this view of the DH in interleague play when I asked: "If we run into a healthy Oakland team and Frank Thomas is the DH, no matter who we put up there I think they might have a little bit of an advantage. They build ballclubs with the DH in mind. We build ballclubs to make them more athletic and more versatile."

Last season, during interleague play, only one National League club got a batting average better than .250 from its DH. (That was the Cardinals.) Philadelphia, a team loaded with thumpers who could moonlight at DH during interleague series, managed to get a .235 average with a .382 slugging percentage from the DH position. The AL's average production for the DH in 2010 was a .252 average with a .426 slugging percentage and 22 homers.

Not one NL team had its DH position during interleague play perform up to the AL average.

This season, 13 of the 14 AL teams have regular designated hitters. As a group, they make $110.6 million, or $8.51-million on average per DH. That includes Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz at $12.5 million, Dunn at $12 million, Texas' Michael Young at $16 million, Minnesota's Jim Thome at $3 million and the New York Yankees' former catcher Jorge Posada at $13.1 million. (All salary numbers are courtesy of Cot's Baseball Contracts and P-D archives.)

That group combined in the first turn of interleague play this season to have 30 at-bats in 18 games. That's a hefty price on 30 at-bats.

Hideki Matsui, Oakland's DH, had a pinch-hit appearance. Young had 12 at-bats at Philadelphia, but played first base through the series, displacing another bat the Rangers have counted on. Martinez got eight at-bats in two games at Pittsburgh, and in both games he played catcher. Two of his 15 games that he's appeared this season have come behind the plate. That is a lot of cash to spend on players who are effectively neutralized during an entire series - or must replace another bat in the everyday lineup to play. Try telling an AL club that the player that makes one of the bigger salaries on the team must find a position or sit out about 38 times a season. More on that later.

National League rosters are also compromised by the need to fake a DH.

Last month, during the first turn of interleague play this season, the Cardinals used Matt Holliday at DH. Holliday is a former batting champ and an All-Star. Into his usual spot in the lineup the Cardinals stuffed two players, Allen Craig and Jon Jay, both of whom are still looking for their foothold in the majors. They make right around the minimum. Houston stashed Carlos Lee and his $18.5 million salary at DH when it visited Toronto and into his spot put Brian Bogusevic ($416,000) or Jason Michaels ($800,000). That's better production than a pitcher to be sure, but the exchange rate is significant.

Now salary isn't always a good measure of production, but it's a start.

Several years ago, The Rocky Mountain News (R.I.P.) did a study that showed how small market NL teams are especially compromised in interleague play because they don't have the depth to add a DH. They just aren't built that way. Their payrolls, tightened to begin with, don't flex to add that kind of muscle.

It's as shortstop David Eckstein once asked me, rhetorically: "How many teams have a legitimate 30-home-run guy sitting on the bench in the National League?"

This is a competitive-balance question that the NL and AL can stomach for a couple weeks a season. But perpetual interleague play - let's call it what it is - changes that equation greatly. It would be like the NBA raising the basket to 12 feet in the Western Conference and telling Eastern Conference teams their small forward can no longer dunk during inter-conference games.

Perpetual interleague play would radically alter competition.

Say baseball does do away with the divisions, does make the disappointing decision to ditch the unbalanced schedule and does go with perpetual interleague play: A quick calculation shows that the Cardinals would play six games (three road, three home) against the other 14 teams within the NL. That's 84 games. They could then play the 15 teams in the other league five times a season, and that would bring the schedule to 159 games. The leftover three games can stay within the family. So, that means 75 games will be against the other league and as many as 38 will be played with a different set of rules.

One league's teams will pay a premium price for a batter who sits or displaces another player in 38 games.

The other league's teams will have to repackage a complementary player or reset their rosters for 38 games.

That is roughly a fourth of the season that will require a different roster makeup, a different approach, and, yes, perhaps an increased expense on 15 new job openings that do not exist now.

That hints that baseball would have to adopt the same rules in each of the 15-team leagues to make this work.

So let's call this discussion, this talk of realignment, this Trojan horse what it really seems to be: the doorway that forces the DH into the NL.

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