Baseballhead:
Home Improvement

Michael Cox

Excuse my shaky typing this week—I just saw the recent really disturbing episode of the new "Ren & Stimpy" and I'm not sure if I'm more ashamed for watching it in the first place, or for laughing.

As the good ship MLB is repeatedly steered into icebergs of various sizes by Cap'n Bud "Astigmatism" Selig, every so often we as fans lament that instead of really good ideas for improving the baseball experience, the Powers That Be instead give us "This Time It Counts." Instead of listening to intelligent people who both know marketing and love baseball, they listen to a focus group of 18-to-35-year-olds plucked from the streets of Dayton, and a 20-year-old junior partner at his dad's ad agency.

Thus, we have this year's odd player voting for the All-Star reserves. What exactly is player voting supposed to do for us fans, except apparently give us another reason to laugh at the Yankees? By and large players are going to vote for the same bunch of guys the fans vote for—or worse, because the players get to watch those other players even less than the fans do. Thus we present to you Carl Everett, backup DH, voted in with only 58 ballots, all from those few teammates he hasn't pissed off.

And then, because the every-team-must-be-represented rule is still in effect, the player reserve balloting means that the managers (and Selig) had to mess around with those selections and the pitching staffs in order to insert the missing teams. For example, a quick poll would probably reveal that even most fans in Tampa think the Devil Rays' Lance Carter is the guy from the Backstreet Boys, yet he's on the All-Star pitching roster, while Rocco Baldelli was elected but will not serve.

The intelligence-impaired selection method also meant not inviting Mike Mussina to the dance. I'm not going to quibble with the non-selection of Roger Clemens, because he just didn't deserve it this year, 300 wins or no, although it does show Selig's hypocrisy just two years after stopping the 2001 Midsummer Classic in the middle of the game to wish Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn a happy retirement.

If he's smart, the Commish will be neither seen nor heard this year, after upstaging the players in the last two All-Star Games. Let some Hall-Of-Famers award the Home Run Derby and MVP trophies, Bud. Sit up in the owner's box with Reinsdorf where you can't do any harm.

In reality, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game is by far the most popular of its kind. The NFL Pro Bowl is reviled by fans and players alike and is primarily an opportunity for lesser-known players to bring their families to Hawaii. The NHL tried to shake things up with a North America vs. The World format, and crickets chirped, so they'll be returning to plain ol' East vs. West. The NBA's All-Star Game ended up on cable last season. 'Nuff said. (No word on whether they'll try The World vs. LeBron James next year.)

All that needed to be done with baseball's classic was not to mess it up, let the players play and the managers manage. Now it's a mess, and I'll be willing to wager a crispy five-dollar bill that come July 13, the overnight ratings will show no significant improvement over last year's Selig-infused tie.

And remember, o baseball fan, that there's really one reason and one reason only for all this, the player voting and the winner-gets-home-field-in-October stipulation and all the rest: fans threw crap at Selig last year.

Now he's getting back at us.

Never let it be said that I never come up with constructive ideas to improve MLB's product. Here's an easy improvement which can be inserted into their next broadcasting contracts: demand celebrity color commentators.

So far this year I've been watching as Martin Mull and Bill Murray have found themselves in the broadcast booth, and both times the game was better for it. Mull appeared on a local Mariner broadcast as part of a FOX Sports Net policy of having random celebrities do one inning of one game for each of their local teams. Instead of pretending he knew so much about the game that everything boiled down to clichés, he asked odd questions and introduced non-baseball topics.

Murray, who just happened to wander up to the ESPN booth during Monday's Mets-Braves tilt, went one better. Following an Atlanta sixth-inning defensive meltdown, he did a hilarious Telestrator bit showing how a tee-ball team would have made the play (it apparently involves the entire infield chasing the errant ball into left field, possibly accompanied by at least one baserunner).

This stuff is good for baseball. Casual fans love the novelty. Die-hard fans are so used to hearing the same rotating list of clichés and painfully obvious observations that they mentally tune out the audio anyway.

And the price ought to be right—the cost of hiring a retired second-string catcher as a color man is inordinately high, while there's a whole world of B-list celebrities who'd like nothing better than to live their dreams of broadcasting the team they followed in their youth. Jon Stewart! John Stamos! Gallagher! It doesn't matter—I mean, seriously, look at who's doing the job now and tell me there's no room for improvement.

And on a final note, I'd like to address the following statement to the nationwide sports media:

Irish people sunburn easily.

I stand by that statement. Go tell Jim Rome.

about the author

Michael Cox volunteers to do color for any Pirates-Brewers game. Tell him MLB probably won't allow him to refer to Selig as "The Evil That Dare Not Speak Its Name" at mc@strikethree.com.