One Giant Sigh Of Relief
(Quick note: I changed the font size and background to accommodate the few of you who found the old format none too appeasing on the eye. I hope this has helped your RW reading experience)
I know that a lot of the writers are talking about how relieved Francona and Hurdle were that the game ended without either of them having to try and figure out what they would have done had the game gone another inning or two, but what about Bud Selig? The architect of this inane system must have been experiencing five coronaries and two aneurysms a minute. He was probably praying to God, Jesus, Allah, and Zeus all at once wishing for the game to end.
All-Star managers aren't supposed to plan for 15, 16, 17-inning games. If they were, do you think Francona would have taken Cliff Lee out after 2 innings of work at the start of the game and pitched a bunch of other guys for only one inning? No, he wanted to get as many guys in there as possible so that every team's fans could enjoy watching one of their own. As a Dodger fan, I can't tell you how much fun I had watching Russell Martin play. And that's what the game's about. It's about the fans and an AL-NL rivalry so to Major League Baseball I say this, you can't have it both ways. The All-Star game is either an exhibition or it's a competitive game. You can't walk out 300 former players for a 2-hour intro and call it a real game. It's not like the NBA All-Star game where the teams can bide their time for 3 quarters and then play one competitive quarter to determine the outcome. In baseball, your players literally get used up as we saw last night. They should have had a camera on Bud Selig from the 11th inning on. Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon should have been reached on the phone and interviewed when Kazmir came into the game. Forget text messages with generic responses. I wanted to hear Maddon's voice as he tried to sound neutral about how Francona was handling his ace who has a history of arm trouble and threw 104 pitches only two days prior.
I find myself rooting against the current MLB All-Star game system the same way I root against the BCS. I hate that they award the winning league with home field advantage for the World Series. Should Cristian Guzman really be prominently involved in determining who hosts the World Series? Do you want to live in a world where Red Sox fans have to secretly cheer on Mariano Rivera because of potential home field implications? Back in '04 when the Red Sox won their first World Series, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez almost single-handedly won the All-Star game. What if the Sox hadn't come back from 3-0 down to the Yankees? Would it have made sense that Big Papi and Manny handed home field advantage in the World Series to the Yankees?
You see where I'm going with this. The All-Star game is an exhibition event that used to have pride as its only trophy. They never played for home field in years past yet you still had Pete Rose plowing over catchers at home plate. I got an email this morning from my roto-league commissioner bragging about the AL's victory. He's an Orioles fan so you can guess that the email didn't revolve around home field in the World Series. No, he was talking about the minor leaguers who represent the NL in the All-Star game year after year who can't muscle up and win a game against the big bad AL. There is a sense of pride that goes into the All-Star game and as I watched the drama unfold last night I was thinking about snapping the AL's winning streak, not about home field advantage. I was thinking about watching Russell Martin, one of our own, represent himself and the Dodgers so brilliantly. I'm a Dodger fan, so I know home field advantage is going to have zero effect on my favorite team. If you really want to have an element of competition that the general public will acknowledge and keep the exhibition format, then make it U.S. vs. the World in the All-Star game. You wouldn't have to stupidly award the game winner with anything of importance for an unimportant game, plus you'd have U.S.A. chants. Or, announce that each player on the winning team will be given a $100k bonus if his team wins the game. That would cost MLB about as much a 30-second Super Bowl ad yet think about how much press coverage an announcement like that would generate. It would make top-3 on PTI's list easy.
I just don't see why you would take an event that clearly revolves around entertainment and getting everyone involved and then turn it into something with genuine importance in your sport. Lou Pinella was sitting there, not wondering about Brad Lidge's arm, but probably cursing the fact that Brandon Webb wasn't left in the game to potentially give his Cubs home field in the World Series. There is a genuine incentive to act against the players' interests for the managers because of the importance attached to the game. The All-Star game is a spectacle and should remain that way. The added importance clearly isn't working with the 2007 All-Star game being the least viewed All-Star game in almost forty years. I personally think MLB does it because they want Joe Buck and Tim McCarver to have something to talk about besides umpiring and Randy Moss shaking his rear. Sorry, I don't like Joe Buck and Tim McCarver needs to join Billy Packer in a retirement home effective immediately. By the way, how does Clark Kellogg get the nod over Gus Johnson? Is CBS afraid of putting anyone fun next to Jim Nantz and thus overshadowing him? What if we guaranteed that Gus Johnson would yell, "What a moment!" at least once? Would that work? But I digress.
I'm not sure if you all are with me as far as how stupid MLB is for giving home field to the winning All-Star team but think about this: As we already mentioned, Cristian Guzman was getting important AB's and fielding balls that could determine home field in the World Series. More importantly, and going back to what I started off by saying, what would have happened had the game gone say, 17 innings? You had Brad Lidge and Scott Kazmir out there and there was no way either was pitching past the 16th inning. What would the managers have done? The only thing I can think of would have been having the position players pitch. Rumor has it that Evan Longoria was going to be sent out there if the game had gone another inning because he wouldn't have let teammate Scott Kazmir go back out. But wait, there's more, unless I'm wrong, wouldn't Scott Kazmir have had to have played in the field somewhere? All 20 position players had already been in the game, so if someone else had been sent in to pitch, Kazmir would have had to play in the field. Same goes for the NL which had used all 20 of its position players. Imagine seeing Brad Lidge and Scott Kazmir try to shag balls in right field. What if Kazmir needed to throw a frozen rope to home plate to prevent a run from being scored? How would that have been for his arm? We really were an inning or two away from seeing pitchers fielding and fielders pitching to decide which league would get home field advantage in the World Series. And like I said, I was rooting for it to happen with every ounce of my being, similar to how I always root for five one-loss teams in college football with a solid non-BCS conference team going undefeated to screw up the BCS. While the BCS will not go away because of the billions of dollars at stake, I see no reason why MLB needs to have this stupid reward for the All-Star game winner. Sorry, did I just say I see no reason? I almost forgot who's running things over at MLB headquarters. And that's why I wanted the Selig Cam last night. There is a 100% chance that he had the George W. Bush "What do I do, the teleprompter's not working" face in full effect. Baseball fans deserved to see it.
I know that a lot of the writers are talking about how relieved Francona and Hurdle were that the game ended without either of them having to try and figure out what they would have done had the game gone another inning or two, but what about Bud Selig? The architect of this inane system must have been experiencing five coronaries and two aneurysms a minute. He was probably praying to God, Jesus, Allah, and Zeus all at once wishing for the game to end.
All-Star managers aren't supposed to plan for 15, 16, 17-inning games. If they were, do you think Francona would have taken Cliff Lee out after 2 innings of work at the start of the game and pitched a bunch of other guys for only one inning? No, he wanted to get as many guys in there as possible so that every team's fans could enjoy watching one of their own. As a Dodger fan, I can't tell you how much fun I had watching Russell Martin play. And that's what the game's about. It's about the fans and an AL-NL rivalry so to Major League Baseball I say this, you can't have it both ways. The All-Star game is either an exhibition or it's a competitive game. You can't walk out 300 former players for a 2-hour intro and call it a real game. It's not like the NBA All-Star game where the teams can bide their time for 3 quarters and then play one competitive quarter to determine the outcome. In baseball, your players literally get used up as we saw last night. They should have had a camera on Bud Selig from the 11th inning on. Tampa Bay manager Joe Maddon should have been reached on the phone and interviewed when Kazmir came into the game. Forget text messages with generic responses. I wanted to hear Maddon's voice as he tried to sound neutral about how Francona was handling his ace who has a history of arm trouble and threw 104 pitches only two days prior.
I find myself rooting against the current MLB All-Star game system the same way I root against the BCS. I hate that they award the winning league with home field advantage for the World Series. Should Cristian Guzman really be prominently involved in determining who hosts the World Series? Do you want to live in a world where Red Sox fans have to secretly cheer on Mariano Rivera because of potential home field implications? Back in '04 when the Red Sox won their first World Series, David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez almost single-handedly won the All-Star game. What if the Sox hadn't come back from 3-0 down to the Yankees? Would it have made sense that Big Papi and Manny handed home field advantage in the World Series to the Yankees?
You see where I'm going with this. The All-Star game is an exhibition event that used to have pride as its only trophy. They never played for home field in years past yet you still had Pete Rose plowing over catchers at home plate. I got an email this morning from my roto-league commissioner bragging about the AL's victory. He's an Orioles fan so you can guess that the email didn't revolve around home field in the World Series. No, he was talking about the minor leaguers who represent the NL in the All-Star game year after year who can't muscle up and win a game against the big bad AL. There is a sense of pride that goes into the All-Star game and as I watched the drama unfold last night I was thinking about snapping the AL's winning streak, not about home field advantage. I was thinking about watching Russell Martin, one of our own, represent himself and the Dodgers so brilliantly. I'm a Dodger fan, so I know home field advantage is going to have zero effect on my favorite team. If you really want to have an element of competition that the general public will acknowledge and keep the exhibition format, then make it U.S. vs. the World in the All-Star game. You wouldn't have to stupidly award the game winner with anything of importance for an unimportant game, plus you'd have U.S.A. chants. Or, announce that each player on the winning team will be given a $100k bonus if his team wins the game. That would cost MLB about as much a 30-second Super Bowl ad yet think about how much press coverage an announcement like that would generate. It would make top-3 on PTI's list easy.
I just don't see why you would take an event that clearly revolves around entertainment and getting everyone involved and then turn it into something with genuine importance in your sport. Lou Pinella was sitting there, not wondering about Brad Lidge's arm, but probably cursing the fact that Brandon Webb wasn't left in the game to potentially give his Cubs home field in the World Series. There is a genuine incentive to act against the players' interests for the managers because of the importance attached to the game. The All-Star game is a spectacle and should remain that way. The added importance clearly isn't working with the 2007 All-Star game being the least viewed All-Star game in almost forty years. I personally think MLB does it because they want Joe Buck and Tim McCarver to have something to talk about besides umpiring and Randy Moss shaking his rear. Sorry, I don't like Joe Buck and Tim McCarver needs to join Billy Packer in a retirement home effective immediately. By the way, how does Clark Kellogg get the nod over Gus Johnson? Is CBS afraid of putting anyone fun next to Jim Nantz and thus overshadowing him? What if we guaranteed that Gus Johnson would yell, "What a moment!" at least once? Would that work? But I digress.
I'm not sure if you all are with me as far as how stupid MLB is for giving home field to the winning All-Star team but think about this: As we already mentioned, Cristian Guzman was getting important AB's and fielding balls that could determine home field in the World Series. More importantly, and going back to what I started off by saying, what would have happened had the game gone say, 17 innings? You had Brad Lidge and Scott Kazmir out there and there was no way either was pitching past the 16th inning. What would the managers have done? The only thing I can think of would have been having the position players pitch. Rumor has it that Evan Longoria was going to be sent out there if the game had gone another inning because he wouldn't have let teammate Scott Kazmir go back out. But wait, there's more, unless I'm wrong, wouldn't Scott Kazmir have had to have played in the field somewhere? All 20 position players had already been in the game, so if someone else had been sent in to pitch, Kazmir would have had to play in the field. Same goes for the NL which had used all 20 of its position players. Imagine seeing Brad Lidge and Scott Kazmir try to shag balls in right field. What if Kazmir needed to throw a frozen rope to home plate to prevent a run from being scored? How would that have been for his arm? We really were an inning or two away from seeing pitchers fielding and fielders pitching to decide which league would get home field advantage in the World Series. And like I said, I was rooting for it to happen with every ounce of my being, similar to how I always root for five one-loss teams in college football with a solid non-BCS conference team going undefeated to screw up the BCS. While the BCS will not go away because of the billions of dollars at stake, I see no reason why MLB needs to have this stupid reward for the All-Star game winner. Sorry, did I just say I see no reason? I almost forgot who's running things over at MLB headquarters. And that's why I wanted the Selig Cam last night. There is a 100% chance that he had the George W. Bush "What do I do, the teleprompter's not working" face in full effect. Baseball fans deserved to see it.
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