Major League Baseball's All Star Game is probably the best of its type. The NBA All Star Game is also very good, but the NFL "Pro Bowl" sucks. Even so, this writer hates the All Star Break for several reasons. First, it puts a halt for three days on the season and the Fan goes into serious withdrawals. Second, the game itself is usually anti-climatic. It's fun seeing all those stars together and then the big build up comes from the announcers and then the game itself is played and it's usually the pitchers dominating and a low scoring game.
The Home Run Derby that comes the day before the game is now somewhat tainted. It started with the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and it now seems to symbolize all that went wrong with baseball and the mess we are now left with. Sure, there are still fun moments like Josh Hamilton last year. But by and large, it's a pretty boring affair with far too many commercials and too much talking by the announcers to cover up the fact that the batter is mostly letting pitches go or hitting line drives that fall short of the fence. And man, don't you hate those awful interviews after each turn? The only positive is that some lucky American gets to win a house. Are they still doing that? And do they still play those gawd-awful celebrity softball games after? Now those were cheesy.
For the Fan, the All Star Break is something to get through and not something to look forward to. It's like a visit to Grandma's when you are a kid. "Man, let's just get this over with!" The Futures Game would be more exciting to this writer if he was better versed on the prospects. So add up the entire package and all it means is that for three days, the Fan can't make any picks, has no box scores to pore through, no rundown of the previous day on Josh's site, no Royals lament from Posnanski, no hair pulling from eyebleaf's site. It's just three days to endure until we get back to the fun that is the daily baseball odyssey toward the playoffs.
No comments:
Post a Comment