Baseball has the best All-Star game

Okay, maybe baseball is no longer the National Pastime it was in the 1920’s, when Babe Ruth strode the world like a colossus, or in the 1950’s when kids all over America debated who was better, Mantle, Mays, or Snider, never mind that they all played in New York City and no games were televised nationally.  Football now controls the consciousness of most American sports fans, and the NBA produces bigger, more recognizable stars.  But you must give baseball this—they have the best All-Star game.

The most recent evidence of this is the recent NBA All-Star fiasco, which ended with the Western Conference beating the East 192-182.  Yes, these were the best players, and presumably the best DEFENSIVE players in the league, and yet both teams came close to posting a double century.  Bob Ryan on ESPN harkened back to Woody Allen, saying, “It's a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.” 

Yes, offense is fun, but if no one plays defense, like Bill Murray in Space Jam, then it isn’t basketball, it’s . . .  just a bunch of tall guys jumping around.  The All-Star game in no way resembles actual basketball, because actual basketball games don’t have scores of 192-182.

The NFL Pro Bowl is worse.  The entre concept of the Pro Bowl is ridiculous; football is such a team sport that the idea that you can take a Right Tackle from one team, a Right Guard from another, and a Center, Left Tackle and Left Guard from three other teams and they’ll be the best offensive line ever, is absurd.  Given the game’s violent nature no one wants to risk injury, they put in all sorts of safety rules like no blitzing, and QBs and receivers have no time to work together, and the result is a hyped-up flag football game.

I suspect the NFL would like to just do away with the game except that in our football besotted country, even the crappy Pro Bowl gets great ratings.

Let’s talk about the National Hockey League, whose 2017 All-Star game was won by the Metropolitans.  You read that right.  The NHL All-Star game is now in a 3-on-3 round robin format with players representing their divisions.  As with football and basketball, the hockey All-Star game in no way resembles the game that is actually played during the season.

This brings us to baseball.  The All-Star game took a lot of grief after the debacle in 2002 when the game ended in a tie (Mon dieu!) and Bud Selig decided to avert a national catastrophe by declaring that thereafter the game would NEVER again end in a tie and that the winning league would have home field advantage in the World Series.  This decision was mocked mercilessly until they finally got rid of the rule this year.

In December 2016 MLB announced that home field in the World Series will be decided by the team with the better record.  Of course this makes even LESS sense, since the team with the better record will be the team that played in the weaker league, and why should the weaker league get home field advantage?  Of course I never understood the usual alternative, that the AL should host in even numbered years and the NL in odd numbered years, or vice versa.  I never believed numerology had any validity.

But the baseball All-Star game still looks like the game played during the regular season.  Pitchers pitch, hitters hit, and fielders field.  Because of the individualistic nature of play in a team environment, you can watch the best pitchers and hitters do what they do best.  It used to be that starters played most of the game, which doesn’t happen anymore, but that just means everyone gets to play!

There are still things to complain about the baseball All-Star game, but mostly it’s about who gets chosen and we all know about the flaws inherent in democracy.  But as long as the final score does rise to 25-23, or they don’t switch to a 5-on-5 format with pitchers throwing underhand, it will continue to look like the game in celebrates.

So suck it, football!  Bite me, basketball!  I won’t even dignify hockey’s All-Star game by mocking it.  Baseball still has the best All-Star game of the major American sports.