Major League Baseball has billed this summer's All-Star Game as an eat-your-vitamins event. The game will open with a first pitch by President Obama, a star attraction whose ability to toss a strike might grab some viewers. There also will be a seven-minute pregame video on community service, MLB's All-Star 2009 theme, with appearances by Obama and his four living predecessors in the White House.
With the country in the middle of a recession, baseball hopes to capture the mood of people pulling together in difficult times. Capture? OK, package.
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| As Chan Ho Park can attest, the Phillies had fun with their fanatic support of Shane Victorino's All-Star candidacy. (US Presswire) |
But the gimmickry introduced by Bud Selig's administration has modernized the All-Star Game in ways that might save it from irrelevance. The final-player voting, which generally appalls baseball purists, is hucksterism at its finest. It's also a lot of fun and an ideal way to promote players who either don't qualify as major stars yet, or never will.
Shane Victorino of the Phillies is one of those classic secondary characters on a team loaded with bigger names (Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins and Chase Utley in Philadelphia). He got an extra chance to make the All-Star team, and fans got another opportunity to look over a player having a great season.
Is it likely that Victorino and Detroit's Brandon Inge -- winners of the final-player vote -- are beneficiaries of ballot-box stuffing (and texting-finger sprains) in larger cities? Sure. And is it absurd that Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter staged a door-to-door campaign with Victorino? Elected officials routinely trivialize their jobs by confusing pro-sports cheerleading with civic duty. But they're responding to a powerful demographic -- the same voters we trust with the enormous responsibility of choosing the All-Star starters and the final player. (MLB would prefer capitalization, as in "Final Vote," but that looks a little apocalyptic for my taste.)
The gimmick works because every decent team has a compelling secondary player or rising star. They're beloved and respected by the people who follow them every day, and when they're having an unusually great year or a breakout season, the All-Star Game might as well shine a light on them and ask fans to consider their merits.
• All-Star: Victorino voted in | Rosters | History
So what if the system isn't perfect? It never will be. Many people hate the fact that one player has to be chosen from each team, because the rule impedes an ideal roster. But the All-Star Game serves more than one purpose, and yes, marketing is one of them. More to the point, if you're a player marooned in Pittsburgh, you need some sign that the commissioner's office remembers that you exist. It's like dropping food for castaways before they can be airlifted to civilization.
Yet purists fret over these issues endlessly. They see the All-Star Game as terribly important, and at the same time, they hyperventilated when Selig decided that it should be more than an exhibition. Short of the 1994-95 strike and the steroid scandal, nothing has yielded more wrath for the commissioner than turning the All-Star Game into a contest for home-field advantage in the World Series.
Nobody, it should be noted, came up with a better idea for countering the increasingly blasé approach to the game, which led to the 11-inning tie in 2002, when the managers made sure every player got into the game at the expense of any competitive considerations.
Some managers, including Terry Francona and Joe Torre, have said they are uncomfortable with the competing priorities of the game -- showcasing every player, winning home-field advantage for their league. But before 2003, home-field advantage in the World Series rotated between leagues every year. Selig's alteration didn't remove a merit-based formula for assigning home-field advantage.
More to the point, in the six seasons since the new rule was implemented, the American League team has won every All-Star Game, yet the National League has overcome the disadvantage half the time and won three World Series. Last year, Francona faced down an ethical dilemma in the 15th inning. He could bring in a recently used, ostensibly off-limits pitcher from Boston's leading division rival, Scott Kazmir of the Rays; keep using Baltimore closer George Sherrill beyond 2 1/3 innings; or put a position player on the mound and risk both being mocked and losing the All-Star Game.
Francona called on Kazmir. The American League won, and rather than undermining the Rays, Francona's All-Star decision helped them end up with home-field advantage in the World Series. Of course, they wasted it by losing in five games to the Phillies. But baseball's failure to produce a seven-game World Series since 2002, the year before the rule change, is another matter. (Or is it a cosmic rebuke to Selig's solution?)
So far, the alteration hasn't yielded the big reward. All-Star Game ratings haven't topped double digits since 2001. The 2002 rating of 9.5 was tied in 2003, and not matched since. But the game has a higher intensity level. We're not likely to see another Pete Rose bowling over Ray Fosse at home plate, but the critics who say the game has descended to the level of the NFL's Pro Bowl couldn't be more off-base.
Nothing can save that event, certainly not bringing it from Hawaii to the mainland. The only hope would be to make the Pro Bowl something other than a football game. Bring in the best of the NFL, and have them do a superstars competition, maybe swimming, obstacle courses or a softball game. Maybe they could have their own home run derby, trying to hit off retired major league stars.
If Roger Goodell can't come up with an idea, we can direct him to a nasally voiced septuagenarian car dealer in Milwaukee with a knack for avant garde gimmicks.
Gwen Knapp is a sports columnist at the San Francisco Chronicle.
