Don't change All-Star voting, change the games
Ray Allen tilted at a windmill over the weekend when he suggested that fan voting for All-Star positions was overvalued by half. It was a noble sentiment, with only three flaws.
One, nobody wanted to walk with him down this lonely highway.
Two, money will always win out, and there's money somewhere to be made in "Text Tracy McGrady's name to blah-blah-de-blah-blah," whether texting Tracy McGrady's name in any context other than "Whatever happened to ... ?" has any value or not.
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| Ray Allen, an All-Star with Tracy McGrady in '07, sees problems with fan voting. (Getty Images) |
In fact, if you had to rate the four major sports, the NBA All-Star Game is probably the best. If you wanted to include MLS, which brought Chelsea over to play against its All-Stars, it's still first, but MLS still beats the Pro Bowl.
But truthfully, All-Star games are passé, a marketing opportunity at best and a waste of time at worst. Taken as a whole, fans have been given one of those false choices and run with it -- namely, voting for the makeup of a team in a game most of them won't watch, based on TV ratings.
The Pro Bowl is being bounced around like a three-legged hunting dog because it is truly unwatchable. Players strive desperately to be named to the team so that they can figure out the fastest way to decline the honor. The NHL All-Star Game has been all but eradicated by changing formats, the Olympics, and now the Winter Classic, the outdoor game that draws more viewers by a wide margin.
And baseball's All-Star Game is largely an opportunity to bitch about the Pittsburgh Pirate that gets a place on the team instead of the ninth St. Louis Cardinal, an exercise that long ago lost its merit. I mean, the rosters are now at what, 60 players apiece?
Really, the only reason for the games to exist, other than to squeeze a few bucks out of advertisers who get damned little bang for the bucks they lay out, is arguing about why your guy got in and my guy got out. Empty calories, kids. Empty calories.
And Allen's idea, spawned by the fact that McGrady and Allen Iverson may well get midwifed into a game their performances this year would not remotely merit, is an offshoot of that. Allen isn't saying he got screwed, he's saying somebody will.
But that's the other part of the All-Star equation. It is almost never about merit. The arguments are, but the arguments are ignored as the rantings of suckers by those who set up the system.
Iverson, specifically, has a case in that he would be an emeritus pick, someone who gets a pass for services rendered. McGrady, on the other hand, could only be an ironic tribute to promise unfulfilled, to the handiwork of trainers. His career is that of the superb player you could never find.
In other words, a triumph of reputation over production. A movie with a very limited release. A career reduced to a folk tale, as in, "I saw this guy once who could do amazing stuff. I just don't remember his name."
That he is, however, a perennial All-Star tells you why the voting isn't designed to reward anything other than man's gift of opposable thumbs viz. texting and punching ballot holes. It is designed to kill time before the hot dog guy comes around again.
And there is no real solution here, because as appealing as Allen's suggestion might to be ensure the McGrady votes are reduced in import, it really is solving a problem that people already have handled by watching something else. Much as the leagues try to make their All-Star Games events, they just aren't. The parties before and after, maybe, but since those are crab puffs and vodka cranberries we can never know, they don't concern us.
The best solution? It isn't to cancel the game because, well, nobody's going to do that, not as long as it generates more money than, say, Milwaukee at Memphis. It would be the best, but let's deal in the real.
The best solution available is to come up with something better. The NHL tripped over one with the outdoor game, wrapped around the Olympics. Those are opportunities unique to a league that has few enough others, and good for them for figuring it out.
The Pro Bowl should be part of the practice-game package -- preferably put in as the Hall of Fame Game in Canton. Give the stars something to shoot for, and tell them not to get hurt.
The MLB All-Star Game is probably fine where it is, but the rosters should be expanded to include every player in the majors with more than 2 1/3 innings of work or nine plate appearances. I mean, they've already crossed every sensible line, so they may as well just be ridiculous about it.
And the NBA? A computer program that spits out helpful responses to people who vote for Tracy McGrady, like, "Why?" or "Guess again," or "Why not try Wilt Chamberlain? Sure, he'd be in his 70s if he wasn't already dead, but he has just as many points this year as Tracy McGrady does."
Or my personal favorite, a vote for McGrady becomes a vote for Ray Allen. His heart was in the right place, but he was offering an idea that would refashion a round peg into a trapezoid before it was rammed into the square hole. A man who believes in a good windmill tilting should get something for his troubles.
Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle.
