In The Good Ol' Summertime

Summer is fast approaching.  It’s getting hotter and hotter as the months go on.  Baseball’s getting deeper and deeper into the season.  Soon July will be upon us.  And in baseball that means one thing.  The Midsummer Classic Waste Of Time That For Some Reason Doesn’t Reward The Best Players And For Some Stupid Reason Determines Home Field For The World Series.  You think after 80 or so years of doing it, baseball would come up with a better name for it.  We also get the Home Run Derby, which is my favorite part.  I grew up watching Mac and Sosa and Bonds and Griffey hit massive HRs which were mostly all roided up but were still awesome to see.  It’s been a little stale since then, what with the steroid rules and such.  We’ve gotten the occasional fun time with Josh Hamilton’s display a few years ago, but that isn’t as common as before.  Most of the time, it’s because they don’t staff it correctly with the real best HR hitters.  And now that there are team captains picking the squads, it’ll get even worse.  Remember last year how instead of Lance Berkman, Prince Fielder picked Rickie Weeks?  That was dumb.  Now Matt Kemp, captain of the 2012 NL squad, is going to pick Andre Ethier to the team.  Ethier is a good hitter with decent power, but not as good as some other guys.  In fact, the article I linked to says that he definitely wants Ethier (at least it reads that way) and is only “considering” guys like Carlos Beltran (the NL leader entering today in HR and just hit his 18th) and Giancarlo Stanton (who has 14).  If the players can’t even get this right, why bother having it at all?  I don’t get why we don’t just pick the top 5 guys in HR in each league and let them swing it out.  If someone doesn’t want to participate, keep moving down the list.  It’s strange, I know, wanting to reward the best players instead of your friends.

You can do better Matt Kemp.  You can do better.


By the way, why is he still thinking he’ll go?  He’s hurt.  Shouldn’t the Dodgers say “No thanks, we just gave you an unbelievably big deal and don’t want to risk it over The Midsummer Classic Waste Of Time That For Some Reason Doesn’t Reward The Best Players And For Some Stupid Reason Determines Home Field For The World Series.”?  This world can be strange sometimes.