Wednesday, July 11, 2007

All-Star Game Musings

  • No matter how much the media bashes the All Star Game, it will still be fun to watch the game every year. I think for me, most the fun lies in hearing an Orioles' name broadcast over national television. Sadly, however, every time Brian Roberts came to bat last night, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver were far more concerned about the pitcher.
  • Speaking of Roberts, was anyone more relieved when Francisco Rodriguez got Aaron Rowand to fly out to end the game? In case you missed it (and you probably did, since it happened as the sun rose), Roberts mishandled a ground ball with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth, a play that could have ended the game. Alfonso Soriano promptly smacked the ball over the fence, and the NL was within one run. Three walks and a new pitcher later, Roberts breathed a huge sigh of relief that his mishandling (it wasn't ruled an error) did not cost the AL the game.
  • Roberts may not have cost the AL the game, but he definitely cost me 15 minutes of sleep.
  • Does the game have to be so long? A standard game lasts 3 hours. The All Star Game started at 8, went off at exactly 12, unless you watched Ichiro get his trophy. If you took out the Taco Bell "Hit the Ball Three Feet on National Television" Contest, the Willie Mays Played for the Giants Before They Sucked tribute, and the stopping of the game to put keyboards and a Grammy winning singer I've never heard of on the field for the 7th inning stretch, the game would have been the standard 3 hours.
  • Pundits wonder why people don't watch the All Star Game anymore. I point to all the pageantry crap listed above. We came to watch a baseball game, not an awards show interrupted by baseball.
  • Good God, is Ichiro fast.
  • Good God, is Jose Reyes fast.
  • Barry who, now?
  • Why does Fox think the managers want to be bothered during the game with a live interview. The whole time they talked to Jim Leyland, he kept trying to see what was actually going on on the field, as if trying to win a game.
  • Leyland clearly outmanaged Tony LaRussa, and the proof is in the Pujols. LaRussa decided to let Aaron Rowand end the game with a fly out instead of putting his own guy in there. Let me remind you that Pujols is a former NL MVP and one of he most dangerous hitters in baseball. Needless to say, he wasn't happy about being parked on the bench, and who can blame him? What the hell was LaRussa thinking?
  • It wouldn't be fair to call out Ken Griffey for his horrible playing of the ball during Ichiro's homerun, since Vlad Guererro made the same mistake on David Wright's triple.
  • Ichiro and Wright hit the ball to identical spots of the field, and had similar carems off the wall. Ichiro had a homerun, Wright had a triple. White man can't run.
  • Griffey gunned down A-Rod from right field to keep the NL ahead in the 4th inning. The throw beat A-Rod to the plate by about a month.
  • There's never been a more forced look of determination than Johnathan Papelbon's. He tries to have a Randy Johnson-esque stare into the catcher's mitt to evoke fear in the hitter. Instead, he looks like he's taking a crap on the mound.
  • The final score was 5-4 AL. Shew! That was a close one. For a second, I thought the Orioles weren't going to have home field advantage in the World Series.
  • Peace

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree. The All-star game has become a pagentry of everything except baseball. Play the game and get rid of all the other crap that no one wants to see anyway. You don't see baseball players strutting their stuff at the Grammys do you!!!!

Anonymous said...

The nose always loves to talk about people taking a crap. Whats up with that?