Welcome to the MLB All-Star Shamockery!

Courtesy of your blog co-host, and the resident New York Yankees fan:


Sometime in the near future, during the end of a World Series Game 7 telecast:
Tim McCarver: So that's why I won't eat pork rinds...
Joe Buck: Congratulations to the New York Yankees, Champions of Baseball!
Tim McCarver: You know Yankee was actually a derogatory term used by Southern rebels during the Civil War to describe people from the North.

From Home:
Me (thoroughly excited Yankee fan): That was amazing! Thank god that the dude from the Giants with the soul-patch blew that All-Star game! Hooray home-field advantage!


LET'S not mince words....the current format for the All-Star game is flawed to say the least. Now this blogger won't be telling you that there is a flawless format, but to put it simply, there has to be a better way than this.

There are many things that could be said about what is wrong with the setup, so I'll do you the favor and list a couple of them in no particular order of importance:

1. Each team MUST have a representative in the game.
What are we in kindergarten? Are Royals fans, players and management going to cry because they weren't invited to the cool kid's birthday party? Two words: boo-hoo (technically that's not two words, but this is our blog and we do things our way). Perhaps if they didn't suck to the tune of a 62-100 record back in 2006 they might just have been asked out on a date by the school jock. Are we as fans of baseball to believe that our brethren in Kansas City would have to be pulled back from the edge of the roof because Mark Redman (author of a 5.27 ERA at the break in '06) didn't get invited to the All-Star Game?

2. NOW IT COUNTS!
I'm already started so there's no sense in stopping this freight train. Why? Seriously...why? Did some guy in upper-management have a seizure in the middle his presentation titled "Ways to Improve Interest in the Mid-Season Classic: The All-Star Game Revisited"? Or perhaps after the debacle in 2002 someone thought "Lets take this one step further and raise the stakes--because fans of the game aren't already pissed at us enough!"

Perhaps I'm being too much of a forward thinker to believe it's borderline ludicrous to have home-field advantage in the World Series hinge on the result of a single game. Why not just have exhibition games to determine who makes the playoffs while we're at it? Last I checked, teams play 162 games during the year to get in, so why should home-field advantage in the World Series be decided any differently. Interleague play is already in place, so why not make good use of it? Reward the league that wins more inter-league games in a given year with home-field advantage in the World Series. At least in that case we can say with fair certainty that each team is giving it their all because--shit--they want to win that game anyway!

3. The Voting format
Horrible. Lets put it this way: My girlfriend (who picks her fantasy baseball players based on funny names--keep in mind she's finished 3rd each of the past two seasons) has a better shot of picking out All-Stars using her format. Honestly though, a fan vote to determine who gets to start in a game that COUNTS?! I understand MLB is trying to appeal to the casual fan by letting them put players that they recognize easily (note: having your own cologne and/or being a Japanese import does help) in as the starters, but shouldn't there be a better system for this? What MLB is doing by using this format is alienating the hardcore fans by taking advantage of them because ultimately they realize that we'll keep watching baseball regardless of whether this guy almost gets elected as the starting catcher for the AL.

Also, how is the player vote any different from the fan vote? Do you think the player will be able to objectively analyze the performances of other players they may have faced only 3-4 times during the first 90 games of the season? After all, it was the players who voted in the aforementioned AL catcher over a far less like-able player with much better statistics. Maybe the player's selection will be able to win the game with his purity of heart and gritty/gutty nature!


All of these issues are in one way or another intertwined but the message is--to borrow a word from Joe Morgan--consistent:

The All-Star game needs to viewed for what it is--a glorified exhibition game.


Do fans of the contending teams this year need to have their hopes for World Series victory potentially depend on the performance of Brian Wilson? They shouldn't have to.