I'm sitting in my hotel room in Mentor, OH getting ready to head to Classic Park to watch the Lugnuts sweep the Captains, and I just thought I would take a quick moment to write a new blog. I drove myself to Ohio so I can take a mini-vacation after this game, spending time with my family, fiance, and friends etc. So far the team has played well, and it's fun to think that one day I'll be watching some of these guys play in the Major Leagues. I mean, I want all of them to make it one day, but realistically I know it'll only be a few of them at best. It's so fun to watch these young men (I can say that because I'm 23 and older than almost all of them) come together and play the great sport.
ANYWAYS. I thought I would take some time to talk about the Major League All-Star game. It's a flawed system. How can we have the game mean something, but still let the fans vote the starting line-ups? Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy for Jeter getting his 3,000th hit the other day, but there is no way he should have been the starting shortstop at the All-Star game. The fans got it wrong. The fact that Dick Vitale is blowing Twitter up about guys not going is 1) annoying and 2) stupid. I get it, the game is for the fans, well then take the stupid home field advantage off as the reward for winning. If the fans get to vote the players in, yet we make it mean something, it seems like we will always have the problem we face this year. Granted, I can't argue that there were players I thought should have made it and didn't, but I'll put that fact aside. Dicky V argues that it is a bad decision by the players not coming because the money from this game goes into the player's pension fund... Do you think the people of Arizona will come whether Jeter plays shortstop or Jhonny Peralta? I'm pretty sure that's not a big deal. I don't know, it just seems to me that we had a couple of guys bow out this year (A-Rod from injury, Jeter because he didn't deserve it, I mean injury, and Sabathia because he pitched yesterday) and now people are blowing it out of proportion. "Cal Ripken Jr. never missed an All-Star game" as someone on ESPN said today... Newsflash, Ripken played for 2,600 straight games. That's like saying, "Well, Ozzie Smith never missed a routine ground ball" as you watch Edgar Rentaria boot a ball. Give me a break.
I love the All-Star game. Let the best players play. Yankees fans are getting ticked off because their guys are going to the game. Boo hoo. You have a frickin all star team every day. Robinson Cano is in the HR, Granderson is leading off and playing CF. Welcome to the world everyone else lives in where a few players at best play in the mid-summer classic.
I'll jump off my soapbox now. I love the game of baseball, and we're in such a great position right now. It's going to be even better when next spring all we have to contend with on Sportscenter is playoff hockey since the NBA will still be in lockout. That's another soapbox for another time.
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