Mid-summer classic whiffs

Who else out there is not excited about watching the All-Star game? \n"This time it counts" is the slogan MLB is running for the 2004 showcase. But the real slogan should read: "This time it counts … toward profit margins and TV ratings," because that's the extent of what baseball fans will get in an exhibition game that Commissioner Bud Selig has successfully ruined.\nSure, I'll tune in tonight to see Bonds, Sosa, Thome and Co. belt home runs over the left field wall so short my sister can clear it. But distance yourself from the hoopla and what is wrong with the mid-summer classic is obvious.\nYou can't have one exhibition to satisfy two very different demands. On one hand you've got baseball performing CPR on an event that has struggled for television ratings, while at the same time trying to add tremendous importance to the outcome of the game. Either the game needs to be a real competition or be a talent exhibition where the only one more tired than the big boppers is the guy hanging tallies on the scoreboard.\nStraddling the fence between ratings and one game deciding home field advantage hurts both the ratings and the race for that extra home game.\nIf Selig wants the game to carry more importance, then he should handle it with that same level of importance.\nThis means the fan voting has to go, at least for the most part. Put the voting in the hands of the players, managers, GMs and sportswriters. What if the people who actually followed baseball for a living made the decisions on who they thought were among the season's best? \nRather than Joe Blow voting for Rafael Palmeiro because he likes Viagra, guys with big names and small bats would be sitting at home watching the people who deserve to be there. This means slumpers like Jason Giambi would have to buy a ticket to this year's game instead enjoying his first class ticket to Houston.\nYes, there will always be snubs in All-Star games. It's impossible to fit everyone who is having an all-star year to the All-Star game. But a common sense factor would be nice. \nApply this newly discovered use of common sense to the table and you'd see that Nomar Garciaparra should not have received all those votes, because players who don't play for several months into the season shouldn't take one's spot who is having a career year (but who is not recognized by their first name).\nA solution to this problem would be to give the fans the chance to vote a few guys in after the majority of the players have already been named. This will keep those insane Red Sox fans from voting in their third string bullpen catcher just because there are a lot of Boston fans voting online.\nBut Selig and MLB's marketing department know it is these same Internet fans that vote-in players who watch the game. So why not give the fans what they want? Sounds perfectly logical -- until you throw in the fact that the winner decides the World Series home field advantage.\nHow are managers supposed to manage a serious game when their main concern is giving the fans what they want to see? \nIf I were the manager of a game deciding home field advantage, I'd make sure the best guys start and play as much as is necessary, not worry about playing everyone or resting players so they are fresh for their upcoming series.\nIf your main concern is not to overwork these all-stars, then maybe the middle of the season isn't the right time for one game to decide who plays at home in October.\nSince the beginning of the All-Star game in 1933, changes have been made that, for the most part, have been beneficial to the appeal of the best playing against the best. But in the age of the almighty dollar, it is clear that promotion and marketing have become what's more important.\nWoody Harrelson sums it up perfectly in "White Men Can't Jump." Some of us are more concerned with looking good while trying to win than winning before looking pretty. If Major League Baseball would concentrate on putting together an important game where winning is the focus rather than showing off its talent pool, their problems would be solved.\nUntil then, like Wesley Snipes' character Sidney Deane, we'll continue to get hustled with fancy marketing and flashy incentives to tune in to an All-Fluff special.