I’m going to say something harsh here. If I were ruling the baseball kingdom, I would do away with the All Star Game entirely. Why not just have a three day layoff and then reward the best players in the game of baseball with a nice cash incentive slash performance bonus for being recognized as a top performer in their respective league. MLB network can play footage of those black and white All Star Games all they want to in the name of stoking the fire of baseball nostalgia. That’s not the game of baseball anymore. It’s not guys going all out and risking life and limb for the pride of their respective league. That all ended when economics became intertwined in the very fabric of major league baseball itself. Baseball players these days are high paid commodities and rather precious ones at that. So what sense does it make to have someone like say, Andrea McCutcheon, risk life and limb in what is essentially an exhibition game? Come on folks, the Tigers aren’t going to let Justin Verlander do anything more than tip his cap and satisfy the requirement for a little star power to make Fox feel like there nvestment in this pomp and meaningless circumstance is worthwhile. Look, let’s just see the MLB All Star game for what it is. It’s a chance to make more money on obscenely expensive seats for an overblown promotional spectacle. It’s a chance for MLB to make millions of dollars on the merchandise swag that often accompanies the mid summer spectacle. If the modern players of today are bemoaned for not going all out, can you really blame them? Let’s be real here, the MLB All Star game is a zero sum event. It can’t be anything but a lose lose proposition when the hottest player on the Baltimore Orioles, Chris Davis, injures his hand during the home run derby. Does it really make ANY sense to have the most valuable players on their collective teams, risk injury by trying to tomahawk a ball into oblivion just so Commissioner Selig can crow about how he’s rescued the national past time from the dark ages of the steroid era and the ghosts of labor stoppages past and present. The NHL All Star game is about a sport that can’t get out of its own way; a sport that wants to be loved and admired outside of its niche of die hard hockey loyalists. The Pro Bowl is all about feeding the appetite of a nation that can’t get enough of a sport whose popularity has never been higher. And what is the MLB All Star game all about? It’s about smoke and mirrors and pageantry designed to distract everyone from the fact that baseball is a sport plagued by financial inequality within its very fraternity. The MLB All Star game is Bud Selig’s chance to look official before Bio Genesis comes back into the fold and Selig once again has to address how or why no one fears his crackdown on performance enhancing drugs. The MLB All Star game is Bud Selig’s moment of Zen before he tries and once again fails to bring some semblance of order to a game populated by obscenely paid mercs taking whatever substanceS they can get their hands on to keep their edge. Not five minutes after Mariano Rivera’s final and rather magical All Star appearance was being gobbled up by the Eastern Seaboard Programming Network like a bunch of headline starved fan boys, word came down that Ryan Braun and Alex Rodriguez and all of the others in the Bio Genesis case probably won’t be punished until next season if they appeal. Send in the jesters and all hail the King Selig and his MLB infomercial known as the All Star Game.
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