The 2023 MLB All-Star Game

Major League Baseball staged its annual All-Star Game last night.  The National League won 3-2, its first win in this game since 2012, but as the Mid-Summer Classic goes, this game was anything but a classic.   With each team bringing in a new pitcher every inning, and with each of them able to throw the ball a thousand miles an hour, the hitters couldn't hit.  One of baseball's hoariest cliches is that "good pitching stops good hitting."  If it wasn't John McGraw who said that, it was probably Connie Mack, or maybe even Al Spaulding.  It proved to be the case last night, and it produced one snooze fest of a baseball game.  It was somehow fitting the the most exciting thing in the first six innings, an apparent monster of a home run by Lourdes Gurriel, was ruled a foul ball when the umpires conferred for several minutes, went to replay and overturned the original home run call.  They got it right, but the effect was like the proverbial passing of gas during church services.

What the Hell, though, not all ball games are going to be exciting gems, and a good many of the fifty or so games played every week during the season can turn out to be duds, so I have no problem with that aspect of last night's game.  What I hated about it was the presentation of the game by MLB and Fox Television.  Let me count the ways in no particular order....

1.  The uniforms.  One of the charms of the All-Star Game to me has always been the fact that players wore their own team's uniforms while playing for their Leagues.  See how cool that picture at the top of this post looks?  Well, you don't get that any more.  Instead we get ugly, generic "American" and "National" League unis.  The caps do have their teams' insignias on them, but the caps are all the same color.  And batting helmets with NL and AL on them.  Ugly and, even worse than being ugly, they are boring.  Very, very boring.  Nike has to sell more shirts and feed that revenue stream to MLB, so screw what was always a fun and colorful tradition.
2. Ball players being mic'd up and interviewed by the announcers while play is in progress.  On the face of it, it is kind of cool, but I really have a concern when a pitcher is mic'd and interviewed while he is actually pitching in a game.  That is an accident and injury just waiting to happen, and I can't believe that the MLBPA allows it to take place.  Same goes for a first or third baseman, who on any given pitch could have hundred mile an hour line drive come right at their face in less than a millisecond.  It's an exhibition game, sure, and it is supposed to be fun for all concerned, but it is still a real baseball game being played out there, so if you have to talk to someone during the game, talk to an outfielder.
3. At some point last night, a buddy of mine posted on Facebook "Do the announcers even know that there is a game going on down there?"  Announcer Joe Davis was so wrapped up with his in game interviews, the dugout interviews by Ken Rosenthal and Tom Verducci, that insipid exchange late in the game with Alex Rodriguez, David Ortiz, and Derek Jeter sitting the first row, and hoping for the game to end in a tie (more on that in a minute), that he never kept us up to date on changes in the line-ups during the game.  I had no idea that Mitch Keller was called in to pitch until he was one batter into his stint.  As a Pirates fan, I was aware if that faux pas, but how many other times did that take place during the game?  
4. What if the game was tied at the end of nine innings?  Apparently, in that event, the game was to be decided not  by extra innings, but by some sort of Home Run Derby.  A baseball version of a hockey shootout or soccer penalty kicks.   Hey, for the All-Star Game, I concede that that would have been a lot of fun, but play by play guy Davis, and even John Smoltz, A-Rod, Big Papi, and The Captain were all but praying the rosary in hopes that the game would end in a tie so that Fox could bring you this exciting HR Shootout.  When  a long fly ball hit by an American Leaguer in the bottom of the ninth was caught on the warning track, I though that Davis was going to cry that it wasn't a game tying home run.  Not very professional, if you ask me.  The lesson is that for all of you who wished that Joe Buck would go way from baseball telecasts, be careful what you wish for.

Hey, I get it.  Things evolve, and usually for the better, but the MLB All-Star Game, once the only all-star game that was played with the same intensity as its sport requires, seems to be going the way of the other such contests.  The NBA and the NHL give up all pretense of playing defense, and the NFL has virtually eliminated its version of an all-star game.  Major League Baseball seems to be going down that same path.

For your information and entertainment, I am concluding this post with a picture of me as I was typing this article.