Thoughts on the All-Star Game, pt 1

The 3-day All Star Game breakdown in baseball is the worst 72 hours of the year for a sports fan.  There's nothing.  A ghost town in a menage a trois with a sad clown and roadkill.  Episodes of Sports Center directed by Ingmar Bergman.   Filling-less Twinkies.

Football fans are rabid at the mouth as they enter their 6th month of drought.  Hockey fans swelter in the heat and dream about warm fuzzy nights in the belly of a Ton-ton.  Basketball fans carjack, having nowhere to drive, and not being able to afford these gas prices.

You'd think that baseball fans would be excited that they have the only show in town.  And this year, it's quite the show.  The All-Star game is here at Yankees Stadium in the last year of its existence.  Baseball's on the stage!

But no.  It doesn't work that way.  This break sucks ass because in the immortal waste of a spring and summer, baseball starts getting exciting in the third week of June.  And the momentum builds and builds and builds, and then *pop*...everything shuts down for the media.

Monday night it was the home run derby.  Josh Hamilton from Texas, an ex-heroin addict (thank you ESPN for injecting that factoid into my skull) hit 28 home runs in the qualifying round.  He ended up losing to his co-finalist Jeremy Morneau, who sounds like a French-Canadian prodigy but actually waited on you at Waffle House 8 years ago,  Morneau won 5-3.   But what in the Hall of Crapjacks is Yankee Stadium doing, selling tickets like it's armajetergeddon.  $100 was the lowest price you could buy for the bleachers.  I read that somewhere.  

The truly telling moment is the contrast in Hamilton and Morneau's faces while they're vying for the final round.  They're saving humanity, growing paddle-like appendages to scoop up babies.  They're human soup-kitchens.

And right before the final round, they're asked to hit a home run for some random fan who won some online entry contest.  He's out on the field, making love with his suckitude, sucking up to Hamilton and Morneau.

As you might've guessed, neither guy hit the homer.  Hamilton was high at that point, I'm pretty sure.  He's excused.  

Morneau, in his defense, really tried.  He took six pitches before swinging, as if to say "I'm gonna win this mofo a car and get my baby-saving paddles back."  But he didn't.  

It seems that the multi-millionaire players of today care less about the fans.  To which I say:  Fans?  stop spending $100 and up to go to a fuckin home run derby that no one cares about.  Well, except ESPN, who pisses their pants about it.  But who's in the pants?  Who's in the pants, All Stars?  We are.  Wet us with your All-Star urine.  That shit can't even get us pregnant.