All-Star Snobbery

Derek Zumsteg

It has always annoyed me that the All-Star Game coverage is done by the same pundits who tell us who the All-Stars are, all year long, and are quick to point out that we can't handle the power of making All-Star selections and should let them pick for us.

The All-Star Game, for all of its faults in selection process, automatic managers picking their own players, and so forth, has one great thing going for it: the starters are selected by the fans at large. It is at some level a popularity contest, but it's a popularity contest many people take seriously. You can see the respect awarded a great player increase as their vote totals rise, year after year, as their performance does, until they usurp the popular regular. Players with great careers often are voted in along with players having great seasons.

There's nothing wrong with that. We're not voting necessarily for the players having the best seasons, or the players with the best careers, but who we want to see play, based on our own criteria. I want to see Ken Griffey Jr. play with Nomar, and maybe I want to see Cal play third again, even if he is starting to suck it up.

The nature of democracy is that we have the opportunity to be as smart or as stupid as we want. Despite all the complaining you read in the press, be it Peter Gammons' latest or the writing-impaired ravings of the Denver columnists, the fans do a pretty good job of balancing lifetime achievement against seasonal accomplishments.

There's been a lot written and implied about the amazing performance of crappy Cleveland players. Fraud hasn't quite been implied, but after all, this is the first year of Internet voting, and the internet is brimming with crime and rapscallions, ready to write Perl scripts to bilk your hometown player out of his rightful starting job and then order all kinds of S&M books from Amazon.com on your credit card.

So what if Cleveland's assembled an organization of ballot-givers and ballot-collectors, along with the hard-sell in-stadium announcements and rejoinders? Cleveland's figured something out far earlier than other baseball organizations? There's a shocker. Run that one front page, pronto. That other cities can't figure out how to get their surly ushers to give out an adequate number of ballots/row or ever come back to pick them up doesn't mean that Cleveland shouldn't work that out.

If it means we get a wacky vote tally this year and next year my team puts plenty of ballots in my hands, more power to them.

Do we really think that sports columnists would do a better job? Or managers? Or a combination of all three?

I think that these loony proposals that float around every year in response to one slight or another are contrived to do one thing, which would be to guarantee more controversy. Imagine if the Denver baseball columnists could write syndicated pieces about how stupid the other cities' columnists were, or if Peter Gammons could mock the new 'statistics obsessed' voters -- there'd be no end to this kind or insipid stupidity we see today. "The managers seemed to do well this year, but I must take exception to the choices of both my colleagues and the masses as they have selected Ken Griffey Jr. over obvious candidate Billy Ashley, who is on my fantasy team, again."

The All-Star Game is about giving the fans everywhere what they want, a game with the players they want to see. If the pundits want to have their own game, by all means, I wish them the best of luck in convincing the Players' Union to play an extra game for their benefit. I enjoy the All-Star Game the way it is, minor flaws and all.

about the author

Derek Zumsteg was last seen with an armful of ballots, making a last-minute attempt to write in a DH candidate named "NotCanseco." Explain that it should be "NotTheGreatCanseco" at dmz@strikethree.com.