Sports
The yet-to-be-determined starting pitcher for the National League team throws out the first pitch of the 2009 Major League Baseball (MLB) All-Star Game on the evening of July 14th.
Cardinal Sin: St. Louis Will Play Host to Another Unholy Edition of the MLB All Star Game
Then, for the next nine or so innings, his manager for the day, Charlie Manuel, and Manuel’s American League counterpart, Joe Maddon, will quickly rotate through their respective rosters of deserving and not-so-deserving players. Which is to say that most of these folks won’t see more than two plate appearances (or two innings). This, of course, is the point: All-Star games were, up until 2002, exhibition matches: the ultimate answer to such time-killing water-cooler minutiae as what would happen if Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio played on the same team. And, in order to satisfy the answers to as many of these hypothetical super-combinations as possible, frequent substitutions are necessary. Even as the advent of free agency and a resulting fluid player marketplace have made these hypotheticals into more than idle speculation (what would happen if Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez played on the same team?), uber-roster questions persist — and they always will; this is part of the fans’ speculative privilege that makes team sports more interesting than their (mostly) solo counterparts.
The wrinkle in the All-Star-Game-as-exhibition concept came after the 2002 MLB version. Having seen that year’s event ended in a tie after MLB Commissioner Bud Selig decided that 11 innings was enough of a risk to the pitching staffs of the American and National League teams, fans unleashed a torrent of pissed-off responses. To its credit, baseball actually responded to the uproar and moved to insure no repeats of the incident could haunt the sport by granting the winning League of its All-Star Game home-field advantage in the World Series. (Cue ridiculous Fox ads.) But, having thrown some theoretical stakes into the mix, Baseball formalized (as the above linked blogger suggests) its hyping of its flagship exhibition match as something more than it actually is: Home-field advantage on the line, marketing execs would like us to think, makes the game mean something. And that’s too bad.
As a meaningless event, the MLB All-Star Game provided the sports’ partisan aesthetes with a means of true relaxation. From the midsummers of 1933 to 2002, deep-feeling baseball fans could, for one evening, put aside all wishes of gruesome death for the other guy’s starting nine and watch the game with better, more sporting intentions (Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio didn’t always spell success, but back then it didn’t matter). Now, forced to really care about what happens in their All-Star Game (in baseball, even halfway through the season, hopeless is never entirely hopeless), the loyalists are returned to their edge-of-the-coach perch, thinking terrible thoughts.
All of that death-wishing? All of that rooting for your home team? All of that mental effort expended in the name of pushing your favored nine ever on to victory over the course of a 162 game season? It’s exhausting. Debilitating even. The players get their days off, do the fans not deserve the same courtesy?
This is not to suggest that This Time it Counts is all unholy. Indeed, the fact that baseball responded to the complaints of its fans is in and of itself a major positive. And, frankly, anything that keeps the sport relevant in the eyes of would-be fans is something of a victory. Still, six years after MLB made its All-Star Game into the exhibition-plus that it now is, this baseball diehard is, for one, wishing that he could go back to the droll hum of a meaningless game.
Comments
4 Comments
another fine showing.
[...] kara: another fine showing. [...]
Buy:Valtrex.100% Pure Okinawan Coral Calcium.Accutane.Human Growth Hormone.Mega Hoodia.Zyban.Retin-A.Prevacid.Actos.Lumigan.Synthroid.Prednisolone.Arimidex.Zovirax.Nexium.Petcam (Metacam) Oral Suspension….
car http://wi3.aep.ii88.vg : ax4s…
ford…
Add a Comment