Commentary
All-Star game remains a hodgepodge of disorder Any ongoing silliness in baseball ought to be encouraged since the game has spent recent days hiding its face behind Barry Bonds’ hat.
Somewhere out there an old senator, a politician not a player, is gathering the lint of disgrace into some giant lump yet to be revealed.
And the feds are strong-arming bullpen ciphers to rat out friends, this for reasons not entirely clear or maybe even honorable.
So any occasion of light insignificance deserves support and should not be turned into more hard duty.
Even something as feel-good as baseball’s All-Star Game has been solemnized into counting for something – that being the home-field advantage in the World Series.
This is a real advantage and not just a slogan. It really does count. In the past 20 Series, the team opening at home has won 17 of them, and two in a row when the All-Star Game was given its extra obligation.
And yet, the game itself remains a hodgepodge of disorder, ill-fitted for its responsibility. It is the comic trying to do Eugene O’Neill, the whoopee cushion in a church pew, the dog hair on the tuxedo.
I could go on and on like that, but the idea is that you don’t ask a carpenter to use a rubber hammer, or if you do, you do it for laughs.
A baseball game is either for fun or it is for real. And if it is for real, you have 162 of those and you don’t really need another one.
I think of the second-best baseball movie ever made, “A League of Their Own,” and Tom Hanks summing up his duties. They were to show his face, doff his little cap and still make happy hour.
This would seem to be enough for baseball, as it is for every other All-Star Game, and if we were to list the actual stars we wanted to see, certainly Bonds would have to be there. If your circus has a pink elephant, that is who leads the parade.
Curt Schilling would be another, and Tom Glavine. Greg Maddux, too, and come to think of it, Jason Giambi, if only to compare the before and after photos. If you had a chance to see Roger Clemens, you’d want to take it. Or Ken Griffey Jr., Mike Piazza one last time, or Randy Johnson to say so long.
None will be there. This is not because they are relics, as they are, but because the game tries to mix reward with curiosity, and only in the past four years has it overreached itself.
If something real and vital is at stake, then only the best players with the best chance of winning should be included, with no pitch limits or tokenism considered. A few years ago, when extra innings used up all the pitchers, instead of just laughing out loud and getting on with it, baseball stripped the fun and added unreasonable responsibility.
If the game belongs to the fans, then the fans ought to be able to pick the floor show, including a guy on a unicycle balancing plates on a Louisville Slugger, if they want. And believe me, if there had been somebody like that on the ballot, I would have voted for him.
Fans get to vote for whom they would like to see, as many as 25 times if they like, or more if they are computer competent. And so there is no explaining why they would want to see Chase Utley as the National League second baseman when Craig Biggio and Jeff Kent are still around.
The Mets and the Yankees got out the vote, having the greater population base to encourage, and thus do we have a whole bunch of New Yorkers and not so many Arizonans and Kansas Citians.
In fact, one such poor soul from Kansas City, pitcher Mark Redman – he with the highest earned-run average of any All-Star since the invention of the decimal point – has become the poster flaw for the whole system, this because each team must send someone, and Redman was the roundest peg for the squarest hole.
This is the sort of distinction that usually falls to a Rockies player, the one-man, one-team obligation. But this year, things have changed.
A measure of progress for Colorado is in the standings, of course, a tight little group in the National League West with the promise of summer wonder that surely will include the local baseball club.
But more than that, the remarkable sign that the Rockies are not what they once were is that two of them are included on the roster on merit, and neither being Todd Helton.
Possibly, Matt Holliday and Brian Fuentes might need two forms of ID, but they will not need to apologize for being there.
My hope is that Redman has to get Albert Pujols out to clinch the Series home field for the American League. And, what’s more, that he does it.
(Contact Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)