Spotlighting Sports


Mark Glenn


I don't know when Major League Baseball is going to get the message, but it is time for them to realize their All-Star Game is a joke.

It would be a gross understatement to say the system is flawed, and the more tweaking that is done the worse it gets. The fans vote, the players vote, the managers vote, the fans vote again. Everyone but Texas Rangers pitcher Kameron Loe's pet boa constrictor, Angel gets a vote.

Is it good that your final list of all-stars has been whittled down to 32? Is that really an elite group? Do you have to have seven more players than teams are allowed to carry during the season?

There is no question in my mind, that the Mid-Summer Classic has lost its importance - even though we know how hard Commissioner Bud Selig has tried to ram relevance down our throats. His not so great idea of having the winner get the home field advantage in the World Series has not helped the television ratings. The ratings are low, not synchronized swimming low, but low by comparison with Dobie Gillis reruns.

I watched about two innings of the game last year and there is a good chance I won't make it any further on Tuesday. I'll probably go down to the Friendship Inn Restaurant with my coffee drinking group where we will talk about more important stuff, like which waitress would win a wrist wrestling contest if there was one.

This game is not really a game. It's a show. Managers don't manage like they are trying to win the game, so why does it determine who garners home field advantage in the World Series?

So what has to be done before next year's game in San Francisco? How can this be saved? Easy. It can't. There are too many inadequacies to put the World Series on the line and the vote is so complicated now that deserving players are being left out.

There are two solutions. One is to go back to the old way when the leagues alternated each year for the extra home game. The other is to give the advantage to the league which wins the majority of interleague games.

As baseball fans know, the interleague games work well in some places, not well in others. Baseball fans also know the American League stomped the National League this year, 154-98, a percentage of .611.

While that disparity is unusual, the 126 interleague games make sure the ample size is much closer to real life than one game with teams that were made for television.

The AL would have earned the extra game this season by its dominance over the NL, and in more representative years the last few days of interleague play would have a significant meaning.

Americans have come to understand that the only games people value are post season games, or games that help define the post season.

Ultimately, all of this doesn't solve the problem of the All-Star Game as worthwhile entertainment, but the reality of it is that all-star games have simply outlived their value except as a public bribe.

The Pro Bowl is a hideous debacle and the NBA All-Star game is so unrealistic that even the slam dunk contest has become a bad venue of entertainment for players you barely know.

Possibly the best solution for the matter is to not to have the games at all.