So, it’s the All-Star break. Show of hands, everyone who cares. …Raise ’em high, folks. …No? Mr. Selig, how about you? …Okay, “just stretching,” got it. Anyone else?

Yeah, you know, every year it’s the same thing, the sporting press — and especially the sporting blogosphere — ranting on about various peccadilloes of the All-Star Game for, like, three whole screens and then winding up with a dismissive comment along the lines of “…and this is why the All-Star Game is irrelevant and nobody cares about it.”

I’ll tell you why I don’t care about it — it interrupts the regular season. Yeah, yeah, it “counts now,” for home-field advantage in the World Series, but most fans do not root for one league over the other one; we root for teams. And most fans understand that home-field advantage is not really a factor in postseason success. If a reader would like to provide me with statistics which suggest that opening a short series at home provides the home team with a statistically significant advantage, I will happily stand corrected, but anecdotal small-sample-size evidence from the Yankees’ last few trips to the postseason would imply rather strongly that it doesn’t mean squat.

And you have to get to the World Series first, and speaking as a Yankee fan…Boston is not messing around this year. At all. The Yanks can’t seem to pick up any meaningful ground in the standings, and the wild card team is not going to come out of the AL East this year; it’s coming out of the AL Central, so if we want to get to the postseason, we have to win the division, which I would not give short odds. And then we have to get past Chicago or Detroit somewhere along the line, and I would not give short odds to that, either. I don’t know what other teams’ fans have on their minds right now, but I think even the most optimistically partisan citizens of Bomber Nation understand that where the Fall Classic is played is not what we need to worry about right now. We need to worry about the fact that our starters can’t seem to get from one end of a fourth inning to the other, and we can’t gain on Boston if we aren’t playing games that count.

Now, if the argument is that the players need a mid-season break, okay, I can buy that. It’s hot out, the travel schedule is a bitch for guys with families — what the hell, give ’em a long weekend. They don’t get any of the long weekends we get. And the All-Star break has become, over the years, a useful tool in terms of measuring stats, discussing a team’s progress, and so on — just the ability to talk about a team in terms of first half and second half, and the texture that it gives a baseball season, which without An Official Mid-Point like the All-Star break might seem more monotonous or more featureless. As it is now, I think a lot of fans see the first half of the season as a series of emerging patterns, an assembling of tools and weapons, and the second half as the time when the battle is joined. Or maybe it’s just me who sees it that way, but I still think stopping for a breath at the midpoint of the season is worthwhile.

Unfortunately, the All-Star Game means that certain players don’t get a break. And because it does take place in the middle of the season, it makes the selections less…I don’t know. Worthy, I guess.

Not that the selection process has covered itself with glory as it is. Online pundits in particular love to make the case that the All-Star teams don’t accurately represent the quality players in the major leagues, because The Fans Are Idiots Who Just Vote For Their Favorites. That line of reasoning really bugs me, because first of all, I read nearly a dozen baseball blogs on a regular basis, I enjoy them all, and I enjoy them because these people really care about the game. Most of them don’t get paid, don’t make any money off posting every day — sometimes more than once — and sitting there with a calculator, figuring out VORP and RISP BAs and whatever else. They do it because they love it and they care about doing it. They’re…fans. They can argue that they’re better informed, or use better tools to analyze the game, than most people who follow the game, but…so?

Furthermore, that’s…the whole point of the voting process. It’s to let the fans have a say. Like anything else, that’s going to have pluses and minuses, especially now that the ballot is online and the fans don’t have to make any real effort to get a ballot and put the time in there…but that’s what the All-Star Game is about, letting the fans see all their favorites play. I went through the lists carefully and voted for who I thought was best based on what I’d seen; I didn’t vote for all Yankees, and I didn’t fill out an NL ballot because I didn’t know enough about the players in that league — la dee da, look at me, all truth and justice with my ballot, give me a gold star! …Whatever, you know? It’s a popularity contest. This is not new.

And what exactly is the alternative? Letting the manager pick? Because Guillen is determined to field an all-White-Sox squad, because Guillen is maybe a little bit loco. So, then what? I’ll tell you right now, some of the same people who will complain about Jeter getting a bid to the game will also not see a problem with Ortiz starting the game at first base. Jeter’s having a good season, and I don’t have a problem with his selection; Ortiz is a great hitter, and I don’t have a problem with his selection either. But it’s not a perfect system.

Players skip the game because they don’t want to risk getting hurt; I don’t love that, but I can see where they’re coming from. Fans skip the game because either they feel it’s not a representative roster of talent, or, if they root for smaller-market teams, they feel their favorite players don’t have a chance of making the team because they won’t have the necessary vote volume; I agree that that’s a problem.

So, seriously: what’s the solution? Well, I have a few ideas. I don’t know how viable any of them is, but I’ll list them anyway, and who knows, maybe some Selig flunky will have insomnia and read my list and mention them, and maybe a few changes will get made, and maybe we can care about the All-Star Game again.

Keep the “break” part of the All-Star break, and move the game itself to wintertime. This may not induce players like Manny, who (allegedly…I’m not going to pretend I know what goes through that dude’s mind) don’t want to open themselves up to injuries, to play it anyway, but it would certainly make any injuries that did occur less disastrous for teams in terms of the pennant race. It also gives the fans a chance to see a whole season of play, and make better decisions based on a larger statistical sample. You’ll still get people voting blindly for all the guys on their local squad, but you can maybe cut that off at the knees by…

Grading votes on a curve according to the size of the market the player plays in. Giant pain in the ass to execute, but would put paid for good to the whining about how the Yankees play in the biggest market in the country and dominate the voting. I don’t think this is actually the case, although I’d have to go back through rosters past to back that up; this year, we’ve got three starters. Jeter’s having a solid season, A-Rod is the defending league MVP, and Rivera is Rivera. I would swap Jeter for Giambi (more on that in a second), but that doesn’t look like dominance to me, so much.

But if people think this is an issue, weight the votes for players from smaller markets. Will it create more problems than it solves? Possibly, but it does seem like there’s a mathematical way to even those imbalances out.

Bill James also has a proposed system for Hall of Fame balloting somewhere that might work here on a smaller scale — the fans vote, but the players also vote, and the managers, and the members of the baseball writers’ association, and the guys at ESPN and Deadspin.com. You weight all these votes a little bit differently (and Dan Shaughnessy’s vote actually counts against the player…heh), and I think you get a more objective, accurate take on who’s deserving.

Regardless of who’s voting, the votes determine the reserves. The managers of the pennant-winners already get recognition by helming the teams. Let them work with what the votes give them. This isn’t a knock on Thome or Konerko, but do we need two ChiSox 1Bs?

Put the DH position on the ballot, and play the game itself according to AL rules. I don’t have a problem with the DH per se. I grew up following an NL team, and it does seem, generally, that the presence of the DH does flatten out the game strategy-wise; if the pitcher has to bat, that makes things more interesting, to me. Yeah, the crazed double-switching during September games can get kind of ridiculous, but it can get kind of fun, too. The DH came in more than thirty years ago, though, and it has things to recommend it, starting with the fact that most pitchers hit for shit and for obvious reasons do not make it a priority to improve, so you can pretend that’s not the reality, or you can put another hitter in the lineup — fine. But I feel like it’s time to make it the law of the land, across both leagues. Like, if it’s a great system, institute it in the NL. If it’s not good enough for everyone to use it, maybe it’s time to get rid of it.

I know: won’t happen. Just thinking out loud here. But as far as the All-Star Game goes, Ortiz is not a first baseman, Giambi’s having a pretty good season (of course, that may not be why he’s not on the team; see also: Bonds), and the pitchers should not have to bat in an exhibition game if injury is a concern, and if they never bat the rest of the time. Of course, that would mean that Kenny Rogers would get the start with no risk of getting plunked at the plate, but you can’t have everything.

If you get voted in, you go. You don’t have to play, but you have to go. If you don’t go, you get slapped with a big fine, and the fine goes towards building Little-League franchises in underserved areas, or anti-steroid education, or an equipment fund for low-income schools.

And speaking of that, how about “This Time It Counts, For Kids”? Make it a charity game. Ask each league to pick a baseball-related charity — or the league manager can pick it — and play with an eye towards donating gate proceeds to that charity. Loosen it up a little, maybe, like those MTV softball games Canseco and McDowell used to play in — make it fun.

The whole idea of this game is to get to see the best baseball has to offer, all in one place, but it’s supposed to be something the fans enjoy. As it is, either we don’t really care, or we’re getting really mad, or we’re getting really mad about the fact that we don’t really care, and it’s probably time to make some changes.

July 10, 2006

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