David McKee

Pardon the digression whilst I vent about the bad joke that was last night's MLB All-Star Game (or was it the "State Farm All-Star Game" or something like that? Bud Selig is whoring the national pastime out like a regular pimp daddy). It was Exhibit A for everybody who hates baseball and says the games are too long and slow.

A 290-minute playing time is simply unforgivable, especially when you consider that it was prefaced by 90 minutes or so of huffing and puffing as Fox Sports foot-dragged its way to the first pitch. You'd think it was a presidential inauguration or something. Plus, the hellish 15-inning duration meant that we had to endure more than our fair share of those two Comstock Lodes of conventional wisdom, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

(Although the "WTF?" moment came from ESPN's normally sagacious Karl Ravech, who offered the seemingly insane opinion that George "The Boss" Steinbrenner was the most beloved person in Yankee Stadium that night. Heck, if fans had to choose between the also-present Yogi Berra and George, Steinbrenner would have trouble finishing third. Besides, has everyone forgotten the petty, vindictive and cruel ways in which Steinbrenner would punish pitchers like Jim Beattie, Hideki Irabu and Donovan Osborne who had the temerity to lose games?)

For an All-Star game, it also had precious few stars. The two managers — Terry Francona most of all — were in an obsence hurry to get the marquee players off the field ASAP. Which meant that the game was decided, and that most of it was played, by the second-stringers, not the players voted in by the fans, i.e., the players people were presumably tuning in to see. If truth-in-advertising laws had pertained to Fox's All-Star [sic] Game promotion, the TV spots would have featured Michael Young of the Texas Rangers and George Sherrill of the Baltimore Orioles, not Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez, who made but cameo appearances. "This time it counts?" You'd never know it from how the game was managed.

Just seconds before J.D. Drew clocked a fat fastball into the right-field stands, to erase a 2-0 National League lead, I thought, "He's going to homer on the next pitch and then he'll be more insufferable than ever." What's worse, he was all-too-predictably voted MVP of the game. That honor should have gone to Sherrill or, in a losing cause, the Rockies' Aaron Cook, who both performed extra-long relief stints as the game dragged into the wee hours of the morning, Yankee Stadium time.

But what made the game truly brutal, other than its marathon length, was the "uggla" play of Florida Marlins second-sacker Dan Uggla. If anyone single-handedly managed to lose the game for the NL, it was he. But with Chase Utley having been prematurely pulled, it was nine innings of ineptitude from Uggla that spectators got.

(In fairness to the NL players, they may still have been in a funk from that rambling, unfocused, repetitive and downright depressing speech Ernie Banks gave them in the clubhouse beforehand. Conversely, George Brett's feisty address to the AL crew made me want to grab a bat and have a go.)

Here's a modest suggestion for future All-Star Game managers: Don't yank (pun unintended) your starters until the game appears to be reasonably in hand. Both Francona and Clint Hurdle were congratulating themselves on having gotten everyone into the game. Being down to your last player isn't cause for popping a cork; it's an admission that you weren't managing to win. Heck, except for Mike Scioscia in 2003, nobody's tried that seemingly radical concept. Might be worth looking into again, y'know?

This wasn't a game for the ages. It merely succeeded in lasting for ages.