Sorry everyone to take so long to reply to comments here. Been trying to finish a book translation (from Italian to English) on time. It's done (only the editing for style remains), and so I have a breather at last.
DoctorKz, no offense taken and I agree entiriely with your assessment of the game when done right. You might enjoy a book I am re-reading now, Whitey Herzog's "You're Missin' a Great Game!".
redwingscup, I do think that the current way relievers are used is a big part of the shift to "three true outcomes" version of the game. I think some rule is needed, though some of it might be physical plant: lower the mound a little, but push fences back to make more contact possible and fewer home runs. Or move home plate and the diamond back if it is too costly and time-consuming to move fences.
The DH was created to deal with the culmination of a long decade (1962 when the mound was raised to 1972) in which offense was scarce and pitching dominated, and runs were few. That coincided, but may not have been a cause, of declining interest in baseball - personally, I think the 1960s political atmosphere had more to do with it, as baseball symbolizes more or a Durkheimian than a Marxist if I can wear my sociologist hat for a moment, vision of America. That is, it symbolizes America when we all feel that we belong. This in fact is a part of why there was eventually pressure to desegregate the game. Lou Gehrig said "Baseball is our national pastime, and there is no room in it for discrimination of any kind." Though to be sure, Marxists, who protested at games against segregation, played some role in the actual pressure to end segregation. But I digress. The point is, baseball doesn't do well when conflict it involved, or controversy (1994 strike, 1981 strike, Pete Rose, steroids, etc.). It is what America looks to see a version of itself that it can like.
So I think an era when conflict (Civil Rights, antiwar, in Vietnam, riots in cities, Nixon and Watergate, women's liberation, etc.), was bound to not be a good time for baseball, and some of the long-term effect of TV and other things took their toll. I understand the owners thinking they needed more excitement in the game, but the 1980s, with all that base-stealing did at least as good a job of that.
The DH of course HAS added offense, the AL has consistently had higher offensive stats than the NL ever since. But in recent years, with the impact of sabermetrics, the use of more relievers and the Taylorist (to again wear my sociologist hat) use of scientific management principles (how to maximize every movement for output - velocity for pitchers, exit velocity for batters, and so on), the discovery that statistically pitchers weaken in late innings (as if we didn't know that) and their replacement with four or five fire-ballers after the fifth, an average batter is now at least as likely to strike out as a pitcher ever was in the past.
Nor, now, as we see, are league batting averages any higher than in the pre-1973, pre-DH era, as the stats quoted in my initial post show. bagchucker is right, of course, that it is still a relatively small sample size, though it is league-wide, so those numbers represent all batters in both leagues, which is not a small number either. But it is still relatively early. So it may change.
There is news today: for the first time the US Justice Department has filed a suit, based on the case of the Staten Island Yankees, one of the A-level teams eliminated by MLB after 2020, calling for the US Supreme Court to reduce baseball's antitrust exemption.
I think it is time, though I would have opposed it even in the recent past: that Durkheim thing (he was concerned that modern society find ways to keep everyone feelign like they belong, what he called "social solidarity", given the nature of the complex modern division of labor to lead people to have less in common than in the past, and with the decline of religion as a glue holding society's members together). But I think it is a good time. And the first reduction of that antitrust exemption - baseball is the ONLY industry exempt, precisely because it was seen by the Court as a crucial element of American culture, and NOT just an industry - should be a ruling that major league teams can no longer own minor league teams. The end of the "farm system." Want a minor league player, pay for it to the local minors' team. This would then move to the possibility at least of other major leagues or other leagues at least, also being able to compete to get those players. I don't love economic competition, as you all know of me, but in this case the very possibility of it, either means some league will say "let' s do it differently than MLB, to have our own identity, let's let fans know that they can see the game as it was once played in our parks and games, no DH, nice ballparks that are scenic but no blasting music, or exploding score boards and fences just far enough away that players have to hit the ball and run around the bases, which would then lead to changes in coaching and training and player formation. Or maybe MLB itself would change to avoid such competition.