MLB All Stars

After today’s baseball games are played, American sports begins a 3-day stretch that to me has always been the most boring time of the year. Aside from the MLB Home Run Derby (yawn…) on Monday, and the All Star game itself (bigger, longer, and louder yawn…), there are no professional games of any kind going on.

Mantle & Banks play Home Run Derby in 1960

I do get some kick from watching Sports Center, just to see what kind of material they use to fill the hours. I guess I will watch a bit of the Home Run Derby, but of course I’ll need to mute the thing, because more than 30 seconds of Chris Berman makes me sick to my stomach. I am old enough to remember the original Home Run Derby TV show from over 50 years ago, and what an incredible treat that was for a little kid to watch in the winter of 1960.

The All Star game itself used to have more meaning than it does now, even with Bud Selig’s effort to attach importance to it by giving the winning league the extra home game in the season’s World Series. Many players from the 1950’s and 1960’s used to talk about the pride they had in their league, and how seriously they took the game. With the advent of free agency in the mid-1970’s, players began to change leagues more frequently and the huge money many free agents received turned many players into men less willing to sacrifice themselves for an exhibition game, and more towards millionaires looking for a 3-day golf holiday. While baseball’s All Star game is not quite as worthless as the other big 3 sports All Star games, it’s getting there. Once inter-league play began in 1997, the league versus league aspect began to disappear all together.

1st asterisk in 1957

The fans had the vote for All Stars back in the 1950’s, but it was taken away after the balloting got out of hand in 1957, when seven Cincinnati Reds were voted in as starters. It was determined that about 50% of the votes had come from Cincinnati, and Commissioner Ford Frick took the vote away from the fans. (The fans got the vote back in 1970, and from that point forward we have seen countless unworthy ball players voted in as All Stars)

Rather than bitch about another year of lousy selections for this year’s game, I decided to nominate my own All Star team, based on the season to date, but I selected only one team, from all of Major League Baseball. What I found to be extremely interesting, is that the choices at almost every position were very easy:

Catcher – Brian McCann (Atlanta)

First base – Adrian Gonzalez (Boston)

Second base – Robinson Cano (NY Yankees)

Third base – Kevin Youkilis (Boston)

Shortstop – Jose Reyes (NY Mets)

Left field – Ryan Braun (Milwaukee)

Center field – Matt Kemp (LA Dodgers)

Right field – Jose Bautista (Toronto)

Starting pitcher – Justin Verlander (Detroit)

Closer – Joel Hanrahan (Pittsburgh)

The first position that gave me some pause was third base, where the Cubs Aramis Ramirez has come on of late, and both Alex Rodriguez (NYY) and Adrian Beltre (TX) are viable candidates. I give the nod to Youkilis due to his substantially higher OPS than the others, excellent defense, and the fact that after a .218 April, he’s hit .305.

Right now, Verlander is the best

At starting pitcher, the only other guys I seriously considered were the Angels Jered Weaver, and the Phillies Roy Halladay. Halladay loses out because he’s a National Leaguer, and Verlander beats Weaver because in only 3 more innings pitched, he’s struck out 18 more batters, and because Detroit is in a tougher division. Right now, Verlander is the best pitcher in baseball.

Selecting the closer from the Pirates was actually very easy for me, but I will explain why I chose Hanrahan anyway.

Hanrahan has the best ERA and WHIP combination, a better than 4:1 strikeout to walk ratio, and aside from Detroit’s Jose Valverde (who has been extremely lucky in many games), is the only closer to have not yet blown a save.

So there you have it, 5 players from each league, and I gotta tell you, looking at this and figuring it all out was a lot more entertaining for me than the game will probably be – if I even watch it?