Still the Best All-Star Game Around
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
An old sports trivia question used to go something like this: what are the only two days where there are no major professional sports games being played? The answer: the day before and after the Major League Baseball All-Star game.
Tonight the mid-summer classic takes place in Anaheim (coverage starts at 8pm on FOX). And while this is still the only meaningful all-star game in the four major professional sports, it has lost something over the years. Let me explain.
At 42 years of age, back in the 70’s when I was around 10 years old I couldn’t wait for the Major League All-Star game to take place. The anticipation of seeing all of the sports best players on one field was incredible.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTYou see, back then there was no such thing as cable television. Depending upon where you lived, you got your local ABC, NBC and CBS affiliates on the tube. And, if you positioned your UHF antenna just right, maybe you were lucky enough to WSBK – TV 38 which was the Red Sox station back then.
There was no such thing as ESPN back then so we didn’t get to watch other American League teams and their star players play unless they faced Boston on TV 38. And even then, we didn’t get to see all of the Red Sox games.
Forget about seeing other National League teams and their star players. You had to wait until the World Series to be exposed to at least one N.L. team.
UPDATE: David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox won Monday night's Home Run Derby to defeat former Red Sox Hanley Ramirez. Ortiz slugged 11 in the final round to capture the title.
This is what made the All-Star game so great. It was a chance to see all of the teams represented by the best of the best. And it was even more than that.
Back then, player salaries were still relatively low when compared to today’s multi-million dollar figures. That made the few thousand dollar difference between the winners share and the losers share meaningful.
Some simply played all out for the love of the game. I am too young to remember Pete Rose slamming into Cleveland catcher Ray Fosse at home plate in the 1970 All-Star game, but that was a great example of the game truly meaning something to the players themselves. Either that or Rose had a g-note on the National League to win that night.
Today’s players make 5, 10, even 20 million dollars per year. Because of that, many of them opt out of the All-Star game with a hang nail.
Bud Selig has tried to add meaning to the game by wrongly attaching home field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star game and it has given slightly more meaning to the outcome.
Most importantly, with cable and satellite TV and the advent of the internet, we can see, hear and read about every player on every team in the sport which has taken away from the novelty of the event.
It still beats the NFL’s Pro Bowl and the NBA and NHL All-Star games. Those meaningless contests couldn’t be more of a joke than they already are.
The Major League Baseball All-Star game is still about a great pitcher trying to get a great hitter out. Remember 1999 at Fenway Park? Pedro Martinez struck out Barry Larkin, Larry Walker and Sammy Sosa in the first. When Matt Williams reached on an error, Pedro fanned Mark McGwire and Jeff Bagwell. On the Bagwell K, Williams was caught stealing and Martinez left the mound to a thunderous ovation. That was real competition.
So while the novelty is no longer there to bring us to the table for baseball’s mid-summer classic, it still represents the best all-star game sports has to offer. And even though I won’t have butterflies in my stomach like I did when I was 10, I’ll still manage to sneak a peek tonight when they take to the field at Angel Stadium.
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