All the lipstick in Bloomingdales won't help the All Star game

First appeared on July 14th, 2010
in The Lebanon Reporter

There are times when inspiration just doesn’t strike. Like, take this week for example. I’m sure the Pacers/CIB fiasco would have made for an intelligent column. But an overall lack of basic math skills precluded me from writing that. Clearly, trying to comment on that situation intelligently would have left me sounding like the congressman who argued stationing too many U.S. troops on one island would result in it tipping over (Google it, it’s true).


Then I thought the fact LeBron won’t win a title with the Heat next year would be a safe choice. But I quickly realized every other legitimate sports columnist in the nation has already gone there and it would appear small and uninspired on my part to ride their coattails for another week.

That leaves the logical stand-by. The MLB All Star game. I found myself thinking how cool it would be to go to Anaheim or Los Angeles or wherever the Angels are playing this year and cover the game. It’s not uncommon for most big time sports columnists to have a budget that covers stuff like that after all. Unfortunately my Reporter expense account leaves me with no choice but to write this column in my living room, which I’ll admit is the next best place to LA.

While the All Star game should be a celebration of superstars and fantasy match ups, it’s instead become hokey and predictable. It started with an unfinished extra innings disaster whose illegitimate child became known as “this one counts”. Now they’re selling us the “All Star game in 3 D”.

Today’s version is a washed up, watered down, PED-free shell of its former self. So how do you fix it? If MLB really wanted ratings they’d have found a way to get Chris Bosh, Dwayne Wade and LeBron to play three on three with Stephen Strasburg, the Barefoot Bandit and Brett Favre.

Of course with the baseball season only being 162 games long, unfortunately we wouldn’t have had enough time to wait on Favre to decide if he wanted to play or not. However sprinkling in a Tiger Woods scandal somewhere in the 3rd or 4th inning would have likely bolstered ratings.

Perhaps they should have included the allure of Russian spies. After all, is there anything more compelling? Well, aside from the origins of that Italy-boot-shaped birthmark Gorbachev wore on his forehead. Perhaps starting the rumor that Strasburg is a Soviet spy sent to destroy American baseball will help build some hype for next year’s game. That might have Joe McCarthy turning over in his grave however; especially if he’s seen Strasburg’s full complement of pitches.

If it’s explanations for the game’s demise you seek, the argument I can formulate while exerting the least amount of thought is the advent of interleague play. It used to be the two leagues only saw each other at the All Star break and during the World Series. This of course meant revenge was on the mind of one of the leagues following a World Series defeat.

If anything interleague play has created friendly rivalries, not the “rip your heart out of your lungs and bowl you over at the plate” hatred we used to see during the midsummer classic. Don’t worry, if you don’t buy this argument I’m not married to it either. So what did we get out of the All Star game in 3D? Somebody famous sang a way-too-long-version of the National Anthem, a bunch of guys grounded out and Joe Buck spit facts out like a programmable robot. Where’s Charlie Hustle when you need him?