All-Star Game Provides For Mid-Summer Whining

Whining is acceptable only at times like this.

After the Major League Baseball moves through its opening weeks, it’s time for a few rounds of interleague play. Before you know it, it’s time for the All-Star Game. Have I been absent from my perennial duties of following baseball? Am I no longer in touch with the heartbeat of baseball fans? When did these two subjects become an excuse for 9 weeks of whining and complaining about our beloved sport? Just snoop around for awhile on the various media outlets and blogs, and you’ll find a wealth of snooty “I should be running the MLB” articles that make it seem like these “central” issues in baseball are worse than the nation's current debt-ceiling problem. 

OK. There’s no doubt that there are a few things about interleague play that need to be fixed. But these boil down simply to providing a balanced schedule. It really shouldn’t be that hard to do this. ESPN’s Jayson Stark wrote a comprehensive piece on this subject earlier in the year. Balancing interleague play, if the league chooses to do so, will likely come down to two things. First, reducing the number of games. Second, removing the “cross-town/cross-state/in some cases cross-region” rivalry matchups that really don’t matter, and because it is interleague, by definition aren’t rivalries. 

As Stark points out, if the MLB expands the postseason by adding a second wild card in each league, team executives will likely push for the old 154 game schedule, and a reduced, balanced interleague format. I’m just playing messenger here; if you’re an executive of a MLB team, you are allowed to complain about things like unbalanced schedules, and stupid interleague series that involve unnecessary traveling. Instead of flooding the web with “here’s what I think they should do” pieces, let’s thank Mr. Stark for writing an informative article, and leaving it to actual employees of MLB or it’s clubs.

As I said before, the timing of interleague flows nicely into the Mid-Summer Classic. The amount of whining and complaining has nearly doubled. Baseball fans love to wax poetic about how it is “the intellectual’s sport.” Does that mean we have a right to nit pick every little thing, all the while offering up grand schemes of what to do next?  Look, in 2002, I certainly agreed with you. There are no ties in baseball, so yeah, the 2002 All-Star Game was a complete joke. And what do you know? The MLB came up with a fascinating idea to make this exhibition of stars actually mean something!

The All-Star Game has been great to watch ever since, with no shortage of close, dramatic games (2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). But no, there’s always something wrong in baseball. Fans shouldn’t be able to vote the starting lineup (a strong belief, ironically, of many baseball fans). The “at least one player from each team” rule is ridiculous. And so on. This year’s game pointed out how invalid both of these points are: enough players didn’t play or show up because of injury or otherwise that anybody “unfairly” left off the squad got there anyways. I like that the game counts for home field advantage in the World Series. And I like that it is subject to things beyond anyone’s control. That’s baseball.

One comment on an article I read today said the flaw in this format is “unfair,” suggesting that Red Sox fans (his guess for the AL pennant winner) will look back with anger because they didn’t have the likes of C.C. Sabathia, Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, and Felix Hernandez supporting the AL squad last night. I almost blew a gasket. First of all, as a Red Sox fan, I could care less who, if anyone, from the Yankees plays in the All-Star Game, even if it counts. By the way, kudos to Boston’s Adrian Gonzalez for driving in the AL’s only run – a solo home run off Philadelphia’s Cliff Lee. In doing so, he also made Joe Buck and Tim McCarver swallow their tongues, as they had just been saying Lee “never misses over the plate.” I always enjoy that.

The AL didn’t have Josh Beckett and Justin Verlander either. Most of these pitchers weren’t available because they took the hill for their teams on Sunday. Home field isn’t worth jack if you can’t get there, especially when each division in baseball is so close. The vast majority of baseball teams thought it more important to get one more win before the break. Most importantly, I don’t think C.J Wilson is a bad pitcher. Last night, he made a bad pitch to Prince Fielder in the wrong situation. “So it goes.”

The home team has an inherent advantage in baseball by getting to bat last. Yet, the home team has won just 55% of all postseason games in history, a marginal advantage at best. Of the 35 Game 7’s played in World Series history, the home team has won 18 times (51.4%). So really, if there’s any case to be made about the All-Star Game not being interesting, it should be that home field advantage isn’t enough of an advantage to care that much about. Even if it still matters a little bit, great pitching beats great hitting on any night of the week, in any ballpark. That’s been true forever.

Sources: Getty Images, http://www.twinkietown.com/2010/9/24/1708402/the-math-behind-home-field-advantage , http://bleacherreport.com/articles/421234-world-series-game-7-what-home-field-advantage

Also, my favorite book ever, Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five Or The Children’s Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death

Post Script:

Before becoming angry on the subject of whining baseball fans, and realizing the inane qualities of articles by writers who think they could (should?) be running various professional sports leagues, I was going to segue from baseball’s All-Star Game to basketball’s. I’ve never thought that basketball’s All-Star Game was that interesting, and it is certainly meaningless in so far as the winning conference doesn’t get home-court advantage in the Finals. However, I do think that if any other sport could adopt the MLB’s format, it is the NBA, and could potentially make their All-Star Game really interesting and fun to watch.

My only evidence for a change is its low ratings except when the game itself isn’t held in a large market (Like this year, when the game was held in Los Angeles, and it got the highest ratings since Michael Jordan’s final All-Star game). However, given that it took getting the bronze medal in the 2004 Olympics, and hiring Mike Krzyzewski, for a congregation of stars to actually play with each other (jury’s still out on the Miami Heat), I won’t hold my breath. But I still think it’d be cool, and I still think more people would watch if it meant something, giving the money-losing league a little bump in revenues. But again, I’m not saying they should do this. I just think it’s an interesting idea.