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"Stoppage"
July 10- Without looking it up, tell me which team one won the last few All-Star games?
It's true that it really doesn't matter who wins baseball's
mid-Summer exhibition match. ESPN's awful All-Star selection show included
a full hour of pointless discussion about "strategy" and "situational pitching match-ups",
as if the All-Star game would be the seventh game of the World Series. FOX
heavily promoted the game for the past few weeks, as if it was a heavyweight title fight.
"The best vs. the best" and other insignificant drivel. The All-Star game's never been
about competition, stats or strategy. It's always been a showcase.
However, it still needed a winner.
A joint decision between the umpires, Bud Selig, Bob Brenly and Joe Torre called
for the game to end in a tie after 11 innings. Both Brenly and Torre had run out of
pitchers and cited the "health of the players" as a reason for the stoppage.
With an impending strike, baseball is reluctant to use the term "stoppage", but after
a banal blanket statement of hollow sentiment from those in authority, a stoppage is
exactly what happened.
Fans immediately booed, and rightfully so.
Was there a better alternative? Simply stopping the game was the easy way out.
A new course of action was charted... albeit an extremely uncreative one, but what else
did you expect from Selig? "Let's just stop and go home..that'll solve everything".
Selig, Brenly and Torre invented a new rule in Milwaukee. With a few MINUTES of thinking, baseball's
version of the Oppenheimer crew could have come up with an inventive way to end the
game on a satisfactory note. It would have involved changing the rules... but
they changed the rules, anyways. They need to change them in a productive way
First alternative would be to waive the pitching rule and allow pitchers to return.
This would require communication and a mutual agreement between both teams.
Ask all the guys: "hey, we know this is uncharted territory, but does anyone
else want to throw another inning?". Some pitchers had already changed out of their uniforms
and showered. But others, like Pittsburgh's Mike Williams, could still be seen in
the dugout, in uniform, as late as the seventh inning. Surely Oakland's Barry Zito, who only
pitched to ONE batter, could return to toss a few more balls, regardless of
his upcoming regular-season starting assignment. Even the Cardinals'
Matt Morris, who didn't play in memory
of Darryl Kile, could have been forced into emergency duty. John Smoltz is a closer, nowadays,
but he could have worked one more inning. The batters aren't scrubs, these are
All-Stars, the best hitters in each league... so you could maybe (just maybe)
understand a pitcher's hesitation.
If pitchers refused to pitch, then ask for volunteers from the position players.
It rarely happens in the regular season, but it's rather imcomprehensible to belive that
someone on the roster wouldn't get a kick out of lobbing a few balls at the All-Star game.
Sure, they would be batting practice throws, but it would been intriguing and would
would almost guarantee that someone would push a run across the plate. A guy like
Curt Schilling might get miffed at being lit up, but would Mike Lowell give a shit
if his ERA was 54.00?
If THAT didn't work... well, I do believe Warren Spahn was in the building.
After the pitching idea, the second alternative would be to copy a page from two of the lamest
activities since scab-picking: soccer and hockey. Go to the shoot-out.
Each team has a full coaching and training staff, which includes someone who
can throw batting practice. Take each team's entrants from the previous night's
Home Run Derby and send them out there. If those guys have already hopped a plane
or showered, then take ANY of your All-Stars. Again, I find it strange that
nobody on either bench wouldn't want to go out and take a few hacks. Alter the rules a bit,
so the thing doesn't last two hours. Perhaps give each batter three "outs" instead of the
usual ten. Maybe each team has two batters, instead of the usual four?
Everybody loves a game-ending homerun, and this would have been talked about for
years. Finally, somebody found a way to make a Home Run Derby matter.
Strange and somewhat revolutionary ideas. But each idea is more satisfying than
what went down. Baseball needed to come together and invent a creative solution to
their gridlocked All-Star Game. A "stoppage" is never the way to go.
Seeing Eye Singles
If you're looking for scapegoats, look to Byung Hun Kim. Once again, he blew a lead on a national stage
and allowed the AL to get back into the game....
|| ... Commendations to
commentator Joe Buck. Buck, on a national stage, voiced what many of us have thought:
"That Triple X logo looks like a leftover from the XFL". Buck again made intelligent comments
all night and kept Tim McCarver's winbaggish babble to a minimum. I mentioned it last year, but
Joe Buck is decent. I like this guy....
||...
Wow, I don't know if can handle this "Triple X" movie. It looks TOO EXTREME for me!
I'll bet he does wild things, like eat X-Treme Doritos and Pizza Hut's
Extreme Pepperoni!!...
||... McCarver's windbaggish comments? Well, he mentioned
"Giambi was out there, and won last night's All-Star Game by hitting homeruns". He also
called a play-by-play of "Toronto's RAY Halliday". I also caught a game he did on
FOX, last weekend. He displayed his usual
Crappy Segue Comments, as he mentioned "TouchTONE pictures presents Reign of Fire...and there's
no reign of fire here, today, as the Cardinals and Dodgers are playing"....
|| ...
The pre-game ceremonies were okay, but the music and kid involvement seemed a little too
much like a Disney rip-off....
||...
I usually despise kid involvement, but seeing little Jorge Posada V out there was a nice touch.
One of the more graphic and disturbing stories I've read in the past year involved
Jorge Posada of the Yankees and his little son, Jorge. Lil' Jorge basically had the top of his
skull cut open, re-arranged, and slapped back on. Yes, his skull.
||...
Did anybody else get nervous when they introduced
"an actor who has starred in Field of Dreams.." Oh Frick! Not Kevin Costner, again!! I could
hear a collective "whew" as it turned out to be Ray Liotta....
||... For all those
old-timers who appeared: would it have been so hard to find them jerseys that actually fit?!...
|| ...
Would have been impressive if they found all those leisure-suit wearing dudes who
mobbed Hank Aaron, during his 715th shot. Where are THEY, now?!
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