Friday, July 17, 2015

The All Star Game Should Be an Exhibition

I was talking with a co-worker the other day who told me that viewership for the MLB All Star game is down nowadays.  I used to love watching the All Star game, but my interest over the years as waned.  I believe it's for several reasons:

A) The rosters have exploded, so being an All Star doesn't mean as much as it used to.  Including those players who were injured, both the NL and AL rosters had 38 players on them each, well in excess of the normal 25 man rosters.  As a completely arbitrary comparison, the 2000 rosters had 35 and 34 players on the NL and AL rosters respectively.  In 1990 they were 29 for both the NL and AL rosters.

B) The game "meaning" something, means that players can't be loose and have as much fun as they used to.

Some of the best moments I can recall in All Star history are just fun moments.  The best players in baseball coming together for one day to show off their talents.

Two of the most memory moments I recall in the All Star game involved Randy Johnson.  One in which he psyched out John Kruk and the other in which he threw behind the back of Larry Walker.







Another great scene was when Torii Hunter stole a home run from Barry Bonds and Bonds playfully tackled him in center field afterwards.





The 2015 game had several fun highlights such as Jacob Degrom and Aroldis Champman striking out the side in their innings.  But for some reason, it just doesn't seem to be quite the same nowadays compared to years past.

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