A midsummer's night-mare

In case you missed it, (you were lucky) the MLB all-star game was last night. There were more compelling story lines during my walk to the kitchen than in that entire game. Kenny Rodgers got booed, Miggie won the MVP, the AL won...again. That's it, that's the whole summary. To be fair, I only watched about half of it. To be fair, I wish I'd just been asleep. And while I sat, watched, stared in disbelief, I tried to think of a few things that would make the game more interesting and about baseball in general. And here's what I decided.

The problems:
1) Baseball, is, always has been, and always will be inherently boring. I love the stats, and I love baseball, but unless it's the cubs or the playoffs, a baseball game can't hold my interest. And I actually like it!! That's not a ringing endorsement for trying to get casual fans involved.


Above: Did you sell your paycheck to get those?

2) This whole, winner of the all-star game gets home field, it needs to squish. However, I'm sick of the media acting like when they switched to this system, they took something away from the legitimacy of home field. How quickly they forget!! Before the winner got home field, it was the league opposite of who simply hosted the all-star game. The winning league getting home field is actually more reasonable than the old system. However, with the NLs refusal to win a game, the old system was at least more fair.


Above: Pregame or the 4th inning? Could you tell a difference?

The answers:
1) One thing baseball needs to be reminded of: an All-Star game is an exhibition game. It cannot have meaning to the regular season, or worst of all, playoffs in any way. Baseball, I beg of you, the team with the best regular season winning %, give them home field. It's safe and it's fun.

2) Since the All-Star game in an exhibition, treat it as such and, well, change the rules to make it more interesting. Juice the ball, cork the bats, bring in the fences, wait...this sounds like 1998.

Let's just do anything then to make it entertaining. I'm serious.
1) Start every inning with a runner on second.
2) Any stolen base counts as a run.
3) Have random multi-color "money-balls" put into play that are worth extra bases for hits, and 5 runs for a homer.
4) Aluminum bats
5) Uhhh...bitches.

And whatever else you'd like to see, just freaking do it. The game needs livened up, it's just not interesting, but then again, that's baseball.

Let's see, there's other sports going on right now too besides baseball.

There's golf - meh.

There's the Tour de France - I think it's cute that everyone pretends to be interested in cycling. ESPN giving updates, acting like people care, I mean, it's sweet. If you just said it started, then a month later said Lance won, it would be about the same. No one cares.

There is one item...and look for more to come on this...the release of NCAA 2006. CAN I GET AN AMEN?!?!?!? With this annual tradition will come simulation, speculations, and of course, man-boy love. All of this will be done with the purpose of annoying Fu that it's still 6 weeks until real games start, but it won't stop me from predictions much too soon.