I Have Three Thoughts On The MLB All-Star Game

1) The MLB All-Star Game, the day before and the day after are the deadest and most boring days on the sports calendar.

2) I'm not a fan of ASG's because the best players in the world are half-assing their play so as not to get hurt. But the fact that this is supposed to be an exhibition (and I don't like the fact that this game decides home-field advantage in the World Series) makes me tired of all those people bitching about every team having a player in this ASG even if they don't deserve it. First of all, there is something to be said about having fans for every single franchise in MLB tuning into the game and seeing at least one person from their favorite team invited. Let everyone feel they have a stake in this game; it's America's Pastime -- why not?

But the better reason has to do with all the other liberties and circumventions of rules enforced for regular-season games. There aren't 33 players on a team, and the starting pitcher in the game isn't substituted after the second inning. Until the starting lineup plays the great majority of the innings in the ASG as a single unit -- unless MLB management, coaches and players treat the ASG as any other contest that counts -- they might as well flout other rules that fly in the face of what you'd normally do in a baseball game. People who hate this "every team has a representative" rule don't seem to give a damn when Zach Greinke gets to sit down after a single 1-2-3 inning even though he's paid to go longer than that.

3) FOX picked a real dumbass commercial for the game:



So there's a giant hand that comes from the sky carrying the Arch around the nation? I guess the players and fans aren't running away because they believe that's God! And who in the hell thought of turning the Arch into a magnet? How in the world does that make any damned sense? Would you like to fly yards through the air from your comfy seat to the magnetized Arch being carried across the country by some heavenly appendage? I'd be cowering in the VIP of one of the strip clubs in East St. Louis trying to avoid that alien invasion.