Somebody Once Told me the World is Gonna Roll Me...

Ten years ago I received a call on the morning of July 13th. The voice on the end of the line was an excited baritone that proffered, "How would you feel about going to tonight's All-Star Game at Fenway?" Being a pre-pubescent fego, my voice triumphantly warbled back, "Awesome!" The night before I had bear witness to the Cerberus of McGwire, Sosa, and Griffey blasting bombs onto the Mass Pike and now I was going to see Jeff Bagwell and Pedro go head to head from the glass perch of the 600 club? I felt like one of those My Wish kids from Sports Center, sans congenital heart defect.

Flying High in the 600 Club

My Pops and I picked up the tickets at the Ritz and back-doored our way into the stadium buying a program along the way. We stepped into an elevator to begin our ascension into the sanctuary of Fenway when my dad starting nudging me. "Don't you want to ask him for his autograph?" I looked back glassy-eyed, "Who?" I raised my eyes to follow the path extending from my dad's index finger and met the thin face of a graying man. It was 1983 All-Star game MVP Freddy Lynn, one of the few guys to win ROY and MVP in the same year. He willingly Hancocked my program and ambled with us to our seats explaining how it was going to be hard for him not to get emotional during the Ted Williams entrance. Acting like I knew what he was talking about I kind of whispered to myself, "Teddy Ballgame."

"Get off the field it's Smash Mouth time!"

We arrived at our seats as Nomahhh was finishing his batting cage session and the stadium was going fucking nuts as the cheers seemed perfectly audible through the 3 inch plexiglass. The player introductions came as did the tears for a wheel chair bound Splendid Splinter. This moment was bigger than my historical perspective at the time, and I'll admit that I got more amped up when Smash Mouth started playing their signature song moments later. I was denied an autograph by an icy Tom Seaver, post Fox interview, and by the time Pedro grabbed the rosin bag I was antsy.

What happened next was the greatest display of precision, power, and charisma that I will ever see live. I remember watching Pedro's curveball from that elevated perspective and it changing direction 10 feet from the plate like a Golden Snitch. This 5'10" 170 pound jheri curler was mowing down these bulbous adonises, like they had done to Roger Maris' home run record the year before. Larkin, Walker, Sosa, McGwire all swung like a feeble Mahktar equipped with a whiffle ball bat. When Matt Williams reached on a booted ball in the second, there was a collective gasp from the crowd as though they imagined Pedro striking out 27 straight that night. Appropriately, on the very next play, he fanned one of my childhood heroes (Bagwell) with me cheering on, and Pudge gunned down Williams in a strike em out throw em out double play. This was NBA Street Vol. 2 '86 Jordan shit. Tecmo Bowl Bo physics. Everyone trapped in the fishbowl chanted in unison with the outside crowd, "Pedro! Pedro! Pedro!" The mid-summer classic was back!

But then it wasn't. The rest of the game trudged along replete with boring pitching (anybody remember Kent Bottenfield?) and anemic offense. Pedro's showmanship proved to be an exception to the rule that had become sports most doggedly unchanging showcase game. Although it may be another 30 years before Bud Selig dies at the age of 120, I want to make a formal request for restructuring the game so that generations after us don't wait their whole lives hoping to see something that approximates '99 Pedro (cause that ain't happening).

When broken down into its most empirical form, baseball is the most fun when we experience two things. 1.) Our favorite players and 2.) our favorite players succeeding while doing cool shit. Fortunately, it's usually the case that our favorite players are the most successful and the All-Star game should stand as the perfect medium for them to all compete together. Kinda like late 80's/early 90's SNL. So why is the All-Star break a Selig fail and what could make it better? Let's go Zapruder Film on this shit, starting with the home run derby.

Henh?!?

The Derby

Unlike the NBA's troika of fun that is the skills competition, dunk contest, and three point shootout, the Derby stands as baseball's only outlet of entertainment where nothing is at stake. As members of the CGI generation I think we NEED this competition to be as video game as possible. The closer the big dodes teeing off on pitchers are to transformers, the better. The problem is that as children we had no expectations for these decepticons, and any prodigious moonball sent us into a "Nintendo 64" like frenzy. Now that we've logged a few hundred hours of Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball and are cognizant enough to make sense of the numbers, getting guys who can "crush" is important. So why is it that MLB continues to put the Brandon Inges, Dan Ugglas, Joe Mauers, and Hee-Seop Chois (this isn't a joke) of the league in the Derby? Sure these guys can rake, but shouldn't at least one 30 homerun season be a pre-requisite to this competition? I understand that Fego-Rod and Mark Bitchxiera don't want to ruin their swings like big boppers of the past (See: Abreu, Bobby) so in recent years they've been given the chance to abstain. This choice is the same reason why the NBA dunk contest has devolved into the D League's ugly step sister. So I'm proposing a Fan's Suffrage for the Derby that only provides player exemptions for the injured or Ichiro. As stupid as the average baseball fan is, he is equal parts enamored by the allure of the homerun, so I think we'd see a thinning of lightweight fegos in the competition. The ballot would include all players in the league (even pitchers), not just those deemed "All-Star Worthy," giving pure sluggers like Adam Dunn, Carlos Zambrano and Pronk Hafner a chance at admission. If this falls short, what about a Mitchell Report Derby that pits clean guys vs. black-marked foes? Imagine bringing back ex players in a Pros vs. Joes format that teams up the likes of Canseco, Bonds, A-Rod, and Manny. We'd have to mic these guys up so we could hear Manny's diatribe to Bonds on how to pack the perfect bowl. Since ESPN currently censors the at-bats, there'd have to be a parallel showing of the derby on HBO. This could easily be the pilot episode for a reality TV show called "A Canseco Way of Life" that pits a team of former roiders against others athletes in their respective sports. Oh wait, Shaq is already doing this. If Bud can't handle the roid rage how about bringing in a pitching machine for 5 outs in the final round to relieve the Alzheimer's Arms that have hurt guys like Josh Hamilton and David Wright in the past. I can only imagine Berman's head exploding when Pujols goes yard, "He's a Cannibal! The Machine off of the MACHINE!" I also like the idea of introducing the aluminum bat as a lifeline for one out so we could see a Bryce Harper Space Jam shot. Fuck fan safety. How is this not more fun? In the event that all else fails let's just go Halloween on this muh'fucker. Allow the players to dress up with no exceptions. Now batting for the NL, Dr. Do Itch Big!

The Suns Gorilla never fails to get the fans going

The Game

The biggest beef most fans have with the All-Star game is that, like most baseball games, it drags on forever. Data analysis has been compiled in season long intervals on lengths of baseball games and it has been concluded that the distribution is in fact Gaussian with the average game running at almost exactly three hours long. After compiling my own data from the past 16 all-star games (I wanted to star with the McGriff game), I found the average game length to be 3 hours and 26 seconds. Take away the 5 hour long Dan Uggla Experiment of 2008 and the average plummets to 2:53. This proves there is no deviation from what we would normally expect from a baseball game in terms of time, and I have represented this information in the bubble chart below (size of bubble represents # of innings played) The question must be asked, "Then why can't anyone sit through one of these once heralded games?"


As the games moniker suggests, this event should showcase the most well-known premier talent of the league. This is simply impossible with the current socialistic approach where every team is represented. There were 30 fist time all-stars this year which is nearly half of the entire roster. Let's downsize the rosters to a more manageable 25 (actual roster size) and eliminate the undeserving guys. This won't price out small markets because it is still the managers and players who vote on the reserves. The "Tie of '02" really fucked things up because it catalyzed the new rule that gives the winner home field advantage in the World Series. Since the game "counts" managers can't justify cutting down rosters with the real possibility of having to play an 18 inning sludge fest. With a diluted talent pool and a shitty "game is real" vibe, there needs to be an injection of alternative thinking. First, let's cut the home field advantage aspect. Instead the losing team should make a new rule for the next All-Star game a la most college drinking games. Something like "All righties from the Dominican Republic must bat left-handed." Maybe we'd see guys parachuting into games or having pregame dizzy bat-offs. The whole league would be tweeting up their ideas during the year long gestation period. Harping back to the video game motif of the HR Derby, why not have the starters of the AS game be the two pitchers with the worst ERA in each league? Have them pitch a mandatory 3 innings just in case the game goes extras and watch this shit go Wii. The incentive for these bottom dwelling hurlers would be a psyche boost if they were able to tame the best bats of the opposing league.

At this point I really don't care what the league does, just stop doing nothing. I can't take another year of Carlos Pena opposite field shots in the derby and Zach Duke parading around with a video camera on the field. And for you Mr. Selig, some parting words from Fegonomics friend Tupac: