It’s about the star power

Comments on Major League Baseball’s All-Star game

By: Hank Kalet
   Miguel Cabrera probably deserved to start Major League Baseball’s All-Star game on Tuesday.
   As of Monday night, the Florida Marlins’ cleanup hitter led all National League third-basemen in all of the major offensive categories.
   But he’ll have to settle for coming in off the bench to spell Mets third-baseman David Wright, who was the top vote-getter among fans.
   Colorado Rockies left-fielder Matt Holiday is in the same boat. Though he leads the league in hitting and is second in runs batted in, he managed to finish a distant fifth in the fan voting.
   To some (Mets’ announcer Keith Hernandez during Monday’s broadcast, for instance), though not as many as in the past, these snubs are an indictment of the fan vote. After all, how could Carlos Beltran finish second and earn one of three NL outfield slots when he’s having such a sub-par season? How could Ivan "Pudge" Rodriguez earn the start behind the plate for the American League when Cleveland Indian catcher Victor Martinez is hitting .323 with 14 homeruns and 63 RBI — far better numbers than Pudge?
   The answer, of course, is that this is the fans’ game.
   The game was created in 1933 as an exhibition designed to showcase the game and fend off worries about the deepening national economic Depression. Baseball was experiencing its own fiscal downturn with attendance declining from a record high in 1930 to its lowest total — less than 7 million — since 1919.
   "Baseball needed to show that it was not in a state of decadence," argued Chicago Tribune Sports Editor Arch Ward, the man credited with making the first all-star game happen (quoted from "Past Time: Baseball as History" by Jules Tygiel).
   Rosters were set by the managers for the first 13 games. Fans were given the opportunity to pick starters in 1946, but were stripped of the vote after Cincinnati fans stuffed the ballot box in 1957, electing seven players from a Reds team that would ultimately finish fourth in the league.
   Players made the selections in the interim, but didn’t do much better of a job than the fans, who got the vote back in 1970.
   The common thread through the years has been the same, however: the desire among both fans and players to see the big stars play against each other on the biggest stage.
   Critics of the fan-vote — including a number of older players — consistently point to situations in which stars having sub-par seasons get the nod over others having good seasons. But the history of the player vote has left us with Vic Davalillo (a career pinch-hitter who was having a big season) starting for the American League in the outfield 1965 over Al Kaline and Tony Oliva, two of the greatest hitters of all time. For my money, that’s no different than the thoroughly unremarkable Dave Kingman getting the start over Ken Griffey Sr. in 1976 because he could hit some homeruns.
   We have to remember that this game is a game of stars, and not just a game of guys who are having good seasons. Fans have a right to see their favorite players in the starting lineups (I voted for five Mets on my NL ballot — Wright, Reyes, Delgado, LoDuca and Beltran — along with Holiday, Ken Griffey Jr. and Phillies second-baseman Chase Utley).
   So, let the fans have David Wright, Carlos Beltran and future Hall-of-Famers Pudge Rodriguez. Miguel Cabrera, Matt Holiday and Victor Martinez will get their chance to play this year and may get opportunities to start in the future.
   It’s an attitude that dates back to the first game in Chicago 74 years ago, when 11 future Hall-of-Famers started and another six got into the game as reserves. The biggest star, of course, was the game’s first true superstar, the aging Babe Ruth. Still a prodigious slugger, the Babe obviously was in decline.
   But that didn’t matter.
   "We wanted to see the Babe," said the National League starting pitcher Bill Hallahan (quoted on the Web site, Baseball-Almanac.com). "Sure, he was old and had a big waistline, but that didn’t make any difference. We were on the same field as Babe Ruth."
   That’s why Barry Bonds and Griffey are starting this year — both are having excellent seasons, but no better than another half dozen outfielders in the National League. But they are the league’s biggest stars and they belong.
   In the end, isn’t that why we watch the Midsummer Classic?
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is [email protected] and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.