The Baseball All-Star Game
Fan voting isn't working and the home run derby is beyond ridiculous
Jul 2, 2007
This All-Star game stuff is getting really old. Who watches it with any overwhelming interest anyway? It didn’t mean anything until Bud Selig put home-field advantage in the World Series on the line, and that isn’t even fair to the teams that put the emphasis on the regular season.
The home run derby isn’t authentic (what a shocker) because of the juiced baseballs that some players have said are smaller than the real ones, and now Barry Bonds has been voted in as a starter! Does anyone else see what’s horribly wrong about that?
You know what it was? It was a bunch of overzealous San Franciscans that went on the internet for 14 hours straight and blitzed the ballot box until Bonds was the hot ticket. Because there aren’t many baseball fans outside of Bay Area that would have voted Bonds into the game without a weapon pointed at their heads.
And most of the players in the All-Star game would rather have the three days of rest than parade around in special jerseys for a couple of days to appease the front office and some fans. There are several players every year that bow out due to sudden injuries or sickness, and those are the players sitting at home watching all of the guys on TV who would rather be at home.
Manny Ramirez is your prime example. He hates the All-Star game and hates the home run derby. Like clockwork, Manny comes up with a reason not to attend the All-Star game about this time of year. Some fans have taken offense to Ramirez’s annual routine of skipping town, receiving Manny’s absence as a personal affront to their voting.
Well, those fans need to calm down, because the game they voted for is nothing but a meaningless moneymaker that serves no other purpose except to make Bud Selig salivate.
And more often than not, the fans will get the voting wrong when the rosters are in their hands. It happens in all sports. Remember Yao Ming in the NBA All-Star game? His mind-numbingly mediocre season didn’t matter to the China masses and they made Yao the leading vote-getter in the league. Yao didn’t deserve the selection, but All-Star games have nothing to do with who deserves what.
All it is - and you’ve heard this before several hundred times from critics - is a popularity contest. Every team has to have a representative in the game and the fans vote everyone in except the managerial selections, which go primarily to the team that that particular manager is employed by.
So really, there is nothing objective or fair or real about the All-Star game. Maybe Selig can put the voting in the hands of baseball writers, managers, owners (well, maybe not owners, because they have money at stake) and players and then the fans of the game could really have a solid product on the field.
But that is unlikely, and we are destined to have a representative from every team, even if there are better players on other teams who were not elected by the fans and can’t be selected by the manager because of the restrictions.
So enjoy this All-Star game. Enjoy the home run derby in all of its completely phony and comical antics. And try not to laugh at Major League Baseball’s desperation.
