“How to fix the All-Star Game” stories run pretty thick this time of year. Everyone looks at the rosters and, more significantly, looks at all of the fill-ins and beg-outs after the rosters are announced and realizes that there has to be a better way to run a railroad.
I’m sort of blah about it all because, even though I will watch the game, I have more or less given up on the All-Star Game as some sort of important or particularly worthy pursuit. Occasionally interesting, sure, but asking how to fix it is sort of like asking how I’m going to fix that swag lamp in the corner of the basement rec room over the beanbag chair. Eh, what’s the point?
Put people still try, and as far as those efforts go, Jeff Passan’s proposals over at Yahoo! are some of the better ones I’ve seen. I think the key is the requirement that starters and starting pitchers play four or five innings. Because really, it’s the token player usage and constant pitching changes which kill the proceedings more than anything. I’d like to see how Roy Halladay adjusts to facing a whole lineup of good hitters, some of them he seems twice, more than I want to see him mow down four dudes and then leave.
And yeah, Wily Mo Pena in the Home Run Derby seems pretty essential to me.