MLB All-Star Game Generates No Excitement, What Happened?

Some of us old gasbags remember when major league baseball (before the need for capital letters) held two All-Star Games every season.

We also remember the cotton gin and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Leaving out the home field advantage for the World Series, an event in which many of these All-Star picks won’t be involved, what’s the point of this midseason timeout?

Interleague play wiped out any firm difference between the American League and the National League. That MLB can’t have a universal rule on the designated hitter would be considered ridiculous except that we live in a world that now bends reality and puts ridiculous into an elite class. So, to DH or not DH is a fetching antique and an odd happenstance we deal with yearly at the World Series.

As a kid, I could name all of the starters for both teams. As a cranky old person, I cannot even tell you (without looking it up, and I just won’t) what time this game is where and on which TV network you may view it.

Hey, Mike Trout may be an all-time great. But I am not tuning in to see him hit once. The Home Run Derby may supply cheaply-gotten ratings and the All-Star game might provide some fun moments, but where is the drama, the heat, the passion?

Not here, my friend. Not here.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman