Wednesday, July 16, 2008

All-Star 2k8


I just can't believe how long that game went last night. I have to admit I'm really glad I didn't stay up to watch it. I might've if I lived on the west coast but any game ending after 1am on a weeknight is just unlikely to be watched by me.

You've got to believe that managers and general managers are livid right now that their players had to play so long and so late last night. I don't know how many pitching rotations this might end up affecting but it will certainly be more than one. I don't want to rain on the parade of the all-star game because I used to absolutely love it. But the purpose of the season is to win as many games as you can, and while it's nice to give fans something different and fun to enjoy in the middle of the year, it shouldn't come at the expense of hurting teams' longer term chances.

That's why I had no issue at all with A-Rod not doing the home run derby on Monday. In the past few years, guys who have done well in the derby have disastrous second-halves to their seasons and A-Rod didn't want that to even have a chance of happening. It ended up being great for all parties since he would've hogged the spotlight and instead a national audience was able to see Josh Hamilton go out of his mind. That said, I hope that explosion of power for Hamilton will not hurt him going forward. He obviously slowed down big time after that first round, let's hope his feel-good story continues and hasn't been derailed, ironically, by the thing that has gotten him the most attention to this point.

Anyway, I love the idea of the all-star game, I like how baseball makes it the most interesting and the most fun, but 15 innings? I don't like 15 innings of any game because almost five hours is entirely too long to enjoy a game.

The one good thing that happened though is that it did not end in a tie. That would have been terrible.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so i was looking at the box scores bc i was i wanted to see how much brain mccann played and saw that the guy who pitched the most was aaron cook who threw three innings. who does he play for? the rockies, and the all star team was managed by the rockies manager. i didn't see espn this mourning, but i hope they are making a big deal about that and how selfless it was. i mean F-rod threw got one out and walked a guy. that's it. so i applaud the rockies manager for making his guy do the most work. god knows, however, espn wont talk about that bc the opposing manager was francona and they love him and the red sox.

i'm rambling, but as much as i enjoy watching all star games, but we need to see them for what they are. they are exibition games that are really good. but no more than that.

Michael Orr said...

Yeah, good point about the Rockies. That's pretty ballsy to leave your best pitcher in for three innings when he just started on Friday and is supposed to start again this Friday.

And you're right, it won't be mentioned at all between Yankee Stadium, Papelbon v. Rivera, Francona, etc. ESPN sucks.