Every July, Major League Baseball likes to take it's best and/or most popular players, throw them on the same field, and play a baseball game. Much is always made about the selection process of the teams and the fact that an exhibition game counts for something very real. Surely, there is no shortage of these types of blog posts and collumns throughout the internet every year. No doubt, sportswriters and fans alike love to complain about anything, even a game that is supposed to be for fun.
The first thing that people love to take off and run with their complaints is how the fans select each team's starting lineups, and how these aren't always the best players in each league. Defeating this argument is pretty simple. The All-Star Game is an event for the fans, so why not allow the fans to pick who they want to see play? Sure, it turns into a popularity contest and half the team is filled with Yankees and Red Sox players, but those are the guys that the fans want to see. So put them on the field.
Besides, more often than not, the game isn't decided while the starters are in the game (last night's 8-0 laugher is really the exception). The game gets decided in the late innings, when it's either players that got in based on the merits of their season, or because they were the only player on their team worthy of being considered an all-star. The starters are long since gone, the popular players have been replaced for those more deserving to determine who has home field advantage in the World Series.
Now, of course I feel that it is silly to decide who has a slight advantage in the World Series based on the results of an exhibition game featuring many, many players who will never factor into who ends up winning, or even playing for, the title. It should be based on which team had the better record, or at least the alternating between the leagues thing that used to happen. But, how have I learned to accept this as truth and not let it bother me on a random Tuesday night in July?
Simple, I've come to accept Bud Selig and his awful and gimicky decision making process. Nothing he has done has truly improved the game for me, yet nothing he has done has caused me to turn a blind eye to baseball. The All-Star Game counting for something is simply another piece of Bud Selig's goofy narrative, which is entertaining enough for me.
I've given up on complaining about how out of touch Bud is with present day baseball. Every time he flaps his jaw about the state of the game, whether it's expaning the playoffs, instant replay, or the use of the DH in National League parks for interleague play, he is trying to improve baseball, but utterly failing at doing so. And I, personally, find it rather hilarious.
Nothing Bud says or does, short of something absurd like making baseball a full contact sport, can drive me away from the game. Negative popular opinion isn't going to force me to stop celebrating Opening Day like Easter, or the seven games of the World Series like Hanukkah's eight crazy nights. Watching the commish stumble over himself as he tries to market baseball to non-baseball people is simply a sideshow to what really means something to me, which is baseball.
Not to mention that I doubt that having home field advantage has ever truly decided a World Series. Last year might be the only year you can make that argument, but I still think St. Louis would have won the series had four games been played in Arlington. So why should I get all worked up about something I don't feel matters all that much?
So, every year I watch the All-Star Game because it is another baseball game, just one with the best and/or most popular players. I don't look at the big picture of what the game means, I don't care that only one player from my favored Red Sox made it on the American League roster or that my enemy Derek Jeter has been a fixture at shortstop for nearly two decades. It's a baseball game, you're going to watch it anyway if you love baseball as much as I do.
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