Does anyone still care about the All-Star Game?
In case you weren't sure, I'm talking about Major League Baseball's annual display of its best, or at least best-known, players, scheduled for July 12, less than 24 hours after this paper hits the street, in Detroit's Comerica Park.
Time was you didn't have to qualify the All-Star Game. Sure, the National Basketball Association and National Hockey League had their own superstar exhibitions, along with the National Football League's always-lifeless Pro Bowl, but there was only one true All-Star Game. And every sports fan, even those with only a passing interest in baseball, knew when it was.
Growing up in the days before the widespread proliferation of cable television, you didn't get to see much baseball on television. There was the "Game of the Week" on Saturday afternoon and "Monday Night Baseball" for those who didn't get enough of Howard Cosell during football season.
With "SportsCenter" and "Baseball Tonight" still years in the future, the only way to see most of the teams that made up the American and National leagues was if Mel Allen deigned to describe their recent efforts during the half-hour that comprised "This Week in Baseball."
Cincinnati second-baseman-turned-ESPN broadcaster Joe Morgan snapping his back elbow a few times before launching a leadoff home run in 1977 is my first memory from a Midsummer Classic. The annual event provided a challenge for a geek-in-training who attempted, often futilely, to keep score throughout. Things would always get out of hand in the late innings, though, as benches emptied in an effort to get everyone in the game and the scorebook proved inadequate for a contest in which three or four players saw time at the same position.
The players' strike of 1981, the first in American sports history to claim a major portion of a regular-season schedule, pushed that year's All-Star Game back by a month. Whether it was the realization that the players and owners clearly didn't love the game the way I did, or the onset of adolescence producing vastly different interests, it was never quite the same. Major League Baseball's insistence on tinkering with a proven formula by turning what was a perfectly good evening's viewing into a two-day carnival hasn't helped.
The annual Home Run Derby became a freak show in the late 1990s, with steroid-fueled monsters making the epic achievement of blasting a monstrous home run look easy and more than a little dirty. ESPN's decision to rerun the 2002 "victory" by Jason Giambi at the height of his admitted juicing a few weeks back was a particularly curious decision, given MLB's belated and hypocritical push to clean up an artificially bloated game.
Most of the hype heading into this year's game has surrounded two events, one comfortably traditional and one painfully modern.
There's the flap over Derek Jeter's omission from the American League roster. I grew up a fan of the New York Mets, so naturally, my second-favorite team has always been whoever the Yankees are playing.
But even the most virulent Pinstripe-hater has to concede Jeter's greatness. Without getting into a statistical debate, if you're not going to invite the sport's consummate player to your All-Star Game, it doesn't really deserve the name.
Still, the discussion is exactly the sort of thing that used to make the contest, and especially the build-up to it, so much fun. And Jeter didn't even receive this year's worst snub. AL shortstops Miguel Tejada and Michael Young are having better seasons, at least by the numbers, and fans selected Chicago White Sox leadoff hitter Scott Posednik over Jeter for the league's final roster spot.
If anyone should be genuinely angry over the selections, it's Cleveland designated hitter Travis Hafner. His numbers (.315 batting average, 18 home runs and 80 RBI as of Sunday morning) dwarf those compiled by Toronto's Shea Hillenbrand (.298, 9, 42). But Indians fans shouldn't be too upset -- Hafner hit five home runs in three days after learning about his shafting.
Then there's the furor over Texas pitcher Kenny Rogers, who was selected and plans to participate while his 20-game suspension for attacking a television cameraman is on appeal with the MLB office. Rogers could have done the honorable thing and sat out, but that would have meant giving up a $50,000 bonus for making the team, so forget about that. How very 21st century -- a player who lashed out at the same entity that helped make him far more rich and famous than he could possibly deserve becoming even better known as a result. Given the public's animus toward the media, he'll probably get a standing ovation if he gets in the game.
Of course, the same guy who threw a breaking pitch -- and missed the strike zone -- with the bases loaded and a full count in the 11th inning of the sixth and final game of the 1999 National League Championship Series couldn't do much to make a Mets fan like him any less.
OK, so I guess I still care about the All-Star Game. Maybe just not enough to go out and buy a new scorebook.
The All-Star break is a good time to look back at our preseason predictions, particularly since most of them are turning out pretty well.
Four of the six division winners forecast in this space -- Boston, the Los Angeles Angels, St. Louis and San Diego -- are in first place. Of the other two, Cleveland is playing as well as prognosticated, but trailing the hottest team of the first half, the White Sox.
It says here, though, that the White Sox are the first-half surprise most likely to collapse in the second. Their ace pitcher, Mark Buehrle, got lit up twice in the week before the break, and both the Indians and Minnesota will be waiting as Chicago's afterthought team falls back to the pack.
Don't be surprised if the team formerly known as the Montreal Expos maintains its stunning pace, though. The Washington Nationals' success stems from a deep, dominating pitching staff that has them atop the National League East Division despite a very ho-hum lineup.
As for the Yankees, they're in the mix for the AL wild-card berth, as predicted. Our choice in the NL, Houston, has quietly edged back into the race after a dreadful start, thanks in large part to perhaps the most amazing season of Roger Clemens' Hall-of-Fame career, making it unlikely that a trade will land the Rocket back in New York, Boston or any of the other cities that covet him.
In the interest of rushing summer along, the Buffalo Bills report to St. John Fisher College in suburban Rochester in less than three weeks, on July 29.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | July 12 2005 |