MLB All-Star Game is a Bore

The All-Star game between the AL and the NL is a bore, much more so than years back. I’m wondering what you think, but here are my top reasons why the All-Star game is boring and should go the way of high-button shoes (in the closet as a memory). What say you?

1. With ESPN News, every highlight is played every day several times. We see All-Stars and all-star plays all the time.

2. With ESPN News, the glory factor — playing for the glory of admiration — is satisfied. Great players get splashed all over TV all the time and this decreases the desire to play for glory. Of the old advantages of the All-Star game was the opportunity to see everyone … we can do that now by watching TV.

3. The All-Star game just doesn’t matter. Sure, they try to make it matter by giving the winning team the home field advantage for the World Series, which is an utterly bad idea, but even players on teams that have a good shot at making it — the Yankees (Jeter, A-Rod, who else this year?) — are choosing to rest and recover instead of playing for whatever advantage they might gain.

4. It’s a false game: the only games that are fun to watch are games in which winning has its essential prize in winning, and losing has its essential downgrade in losing, but this is a game where the managers more or less play everyone, where they are not playing to win but to exhibit various players, and this cheapens what competition and a contest is all about. What if we had an All-Star golf tournament in which Phil played hole one and Rory played hole two … nah, not even interesting.

5. Counter this with the Ryder Cup — now that’s not an exhibition of stars but real competition. Those Euros care about winning, and it’s even made the Americans gather more energy for winning.

As for me and my house, the All-Star game will come and go and we’ll be reading and chatting and maybe go out to the garden and pull some weeds. Too much “star” and not enough “game” for me.

[Don’t even get me started on the NBA All-Star game; the regular games are bad enough.]