SAN DIEGO -- To all you haters and critics who cried foul when Chicago Cubs and Kansas City Royals fans stuffed the ballot boxes and filled this year's All-Star Game with two shades of blue:
Scoreboard.
Not the one that read 4-2 Tuesday night after the American League won yet another Midsummer Classic.
The one that read Royals 4, Cubs 1, Everyone Else 1.
Sure, the boldness -- and effectiveness -- with which fans of the defending champions and the lovable losers rigged the system was pretty impressive. The Cubs started their entire infield in this year's game, a mostly murderers' row of Anthony Rizzo, Ben Zobrist, Addison Russell and Kris Bryant. Dexter Fowler, whose injury kept him from the game, would also have started. Cubbies pitchers Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester were also All-Stars.
The Royals, who turned heads last year when they utterly fixed the voting, boasted four All-Stars this time around. There was top-vote getter Salvador Perez, plus Eric Hosmer and Kelvin Herrera. Wade Davis was also honored but out with an injury. And as defending champions, the Royals had Ned Yost in the dugout.
Yep. The 2016 All-Star Game was largely about Chicago and Kansas City, and the outcry over the Cubs and Royals was loud, old-fashioned, out of touch and, it turns out, wildly misplaced. Those two teams dominated the game.
Perez and Hosmer combined for two homers and drove in all four of the American League's runs. Hosmer had a solo shot and Perez had a two-run homer, both in the second. Hosmer took home the game's Most Valuable Player Award.
Added bonus, at least for Royals fans? Both long balls came off Johnny Cueto, the former Royal who booked it for San Francisco in the offseason.
Royals fans will be quite familiar with the excuse Cueto offered up to reporters after his 1 2/3 innings pitched yielded three earned runs and five hits, including those two home runs versus his former teammates.
"I'm not trying to make excuses, but sometimes you get up and you don't feel well," Cueto said. "This morning I got up and didn't feel well. That is not an excuse. I wanted to go out there and pitch and do the best I could."
Trust me: That quote also felt like a big win for Kansas City fans.
Bryant did his part to represent the Cubs, getting the scoring started with his own first-inning home run, the only one the National League had all night.
So to recap: The two teams whose fans stuffed the ballot boxes hit three home runs and drove in five of the game's six runs. They hit the only homers of the night.
Maybe, just maybe, the fans know what they're doing. Especially the ones passionate enough to game the system and get their guys here in the first place.
And maybe it's a very good thing, as the game inches toward its next incarnation. Commissioner Rob Manfred said this week baseball needs to walk that line between evolving as a modern sport and appeasing the old guard. What better place, as baseball has said goodbye to Derek Jeter and just watched its final All-Star Game with David Ortiz, than at an event voted on by a lot of young fans and represented this time around by so many young, wonderfully promising players?
The future of baseball, at least based on the raw and emerging talent that was here in San Diego Tuesday night, is bright: Bryant, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Jose Altuve, Mookie Betts, Corey Seager.
The future is now. Fans vote. Teams with loyal following stuff the ballot. And the guys they send -- Bryant, Hosmer, Perez -- prove that a game designed for the fans is in fact best left at their discretion.
They got it right. So to all of you still yelling from your lawn: Simmer down, and next time just enjoy the show.
