Tonight is the Home Run Derby, tomorrow the All-Star Game. In honor of today’s home run derby I went to the cages today and hit 120 balls, none of which, I assure you, would have been home runs in Chase Field.
Inexplicably, there’s some horrible country band playing “music” at Chase Field, instead of baseball players hitting home runs. I was hoping to see baseball players hit home runs. Perhaps that will change soon. Oh, now Chris Berman is yelling at me. Why is the fat man yelling?
Tomorrow’s starting lineups are allegedly
For the mighty American League:
Curtis Granderson, Yankees, CF
Asdrubal Cabrera, Indians, SS
Adrian Gonzalez, Red Sox, 1B
Jose Bautista, Blue Jays, RF
Josh Hamilton, Rangers, LF
Adrian Beltre, Rangers, 3B
David Ortiz, Red Sox, DH
Robinson Cano, Yankees, 2B
Alex Avila, Tigers, C
SP: Jered Weaver, Angels
For the oh-so-Senior Circuit:
Rickie Weeks, Brewers, 2B
Carlos Beltran, Mets, DH
Matt Kemp, Dodgers, CF
Prince Fielder, Brewers, 1B
Brian McCann, Braves, C
Lance Berkman, Cardinals, RF
Matt Holliday, Cardinals, LF
Troy Tulowitzki, Rockies, SS
Scott Rolen, Reds, 3B
SP: Roy Halladay, Phillies
But for now let’s watch the big boys hit homers. The fat man is shouting Matt Kemp’s name like Kemp is the second Christ.
Robinson Cano is having his Dad throw him his pitches. Judging from the astounding distance of his blasts, I think maybe the other guys should ask Robinson’s Dad to keep pitching.
I was listening on the radio before I got home, and they were talking with Curtis Granderson. He made the prediction that Cano would have the longest HR, and I thought that was crazypants. How were those shots possible? Is it because he has such a smooth swing that it translates really really well to a slower paced for-the-fences scenario? I’m not doubting his ability at all (that’s obvious), but how do you predict Cano over Adrian Gonzalez or Papi?
Am I the only one who wonders when one of those kids running around in the outfield is going to get hit in the face or head? I’m surprised I haven’t seen any of them get hurt after all of these years. While I hope it never happens, it seems like it could.
In St. Louis a couple years ago a kid (girl) took a bouncer to the face during the warm-ups. She was standing in group and didn’t see it coming, but she took it like a champ and stayed out there.
Screw the homerun derby, make the all-star game mean something besides home field for the winning league. How about having All-Stars that are selected not fake injuries (or move the game to Wednesday for Sunday pitchers) and actually participate in the actual game? What happened to that?
Players excusing themselves from the game doesn’t bother me. Spring training and the season are 7+ months long, If they would rather spend 3 days with their families, instead of playing in an exhibition game I’m fine with it.
Not that the present set-up is ideal in all respects, but I don’t believe the All-Star Game can or should “mean something.”
The appeal of watching the All-Star Game is not unlike the appeal of watching a nonserious, throwaway movie with lots of star cameos and stunt casting.
It’s weird not to see Albert Pujols involved this year, but I don’t think anyone expected him to be back from the DL before the All-Star break.
You can’t make the game mean anything. They should stop trying - it’s stupid. And you really can’t force the players to play. In any case, congrats to Cano. That was very cool.
1- If you’re going to base WS home field advantage on anything besides the alternation scheme of years past, better choices would be:
winning percentages of the teams involved
performance of the leagues in interleague play
Basing in on the performance of players in an exhibition game makes no sense, especially since many of those players won’t come close to the World Series this year.
2- Make the bloody game go faster. If you make a pitching change in the middle of the inning, get those warmup tosses done in the bullpen. When you run in from the bullpen, you should be ready to pitch. And no bringing in a guy for one batter just so he can say he got in the game.
3- The stadium has a PA announcer. The rest of us will do just fine to hear his voice, if fact it used to be part of the charm of the game to hear a different PA announcer do the intros. We don’t fucking HAVE to hear the FOX guy do the PA announcing every fucking year.
4- Canada has a lovely national anthem, particularly if they do the bilingual version. Would it fucking kill FOX to show the anthem being sung as opposed to one more commercial?
It also doesn’t make sense to shove a player from every team onto the roster and then pull the best players after a couple of innings so everybody gets in. Oh well. Baseball doesn’t care.
I don’t mind the AS game determining the World Series advantage. It’s no more illogical than whether or not you can even divide the year by 2.
None of the other suggested ideas for determining it strike me as making any more sense, either. The W-L record of teams in two separate leagues are just too far apart in meaning to mean the same thing as their record within the same league. Basing it on the overall interleague play record isn’t any less silly than basing it on the ASG and detracts from adding a sense of meaning to the ASG.
I like the fact that every team gets an All-Star. I’ve never fully understood the objection to this. I think there is a LOT of value in ensuring that the fans of every team have at least one guy to root for. The All Star Game is for the fans, and it’d totally suck if the fans from one out of 30 cities had none of their players there.
It’s also rarely a problem. Given how huge the rosters are it’s quite rare that a team has no deserving All-Stars at all - it happens from time to time, but so infrequently that it really doesn’t matter. Even a really bad team usually has one awesome player. Last year the worst team in the AL, the Mariners, had Felix Hernandez.
Why not get as many players into the game as possible? They’re all All-Stars, it’s not like you’re sending out a bum at any point in the game.