MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
The Major League All-Star Game is tonight and that used to be a red-letter day for baseball fans, going all the way back to the time the annual MIdsummer Classic was played in the afternoon.
Of course, in those days every meaningful baseball game was played during the afternoons, and the All-Star Game was always meaningful because it meant so much to the players and to the fans of the respective leagues.
You started looking forward to it when the annual All-Star edition of The Sporting News, for over a century “the Baseball Bible” showed up in the mailbox on the Friday before the game. Every edition of The Sporting News was a must-have, but the All-Star Game edition was a very big deal.
There was no Home Run Derby then, but on the days, then the nights, of the big event, my friends Chris Ruppenkamp and James Conley and I would take turns going to each other’s house to watch the games, and we would score them in our baseball scorebooks, or at least for the first four or five innings before our little minds were overcome by the mass substitutions that are part of every All-Star Game.
I don’t remember if either Chris or James ever scored a complete All-Star Game (they probably did), but I know I sure didn’t.
We had such a great time watching our favorite players and enjoying each other’s company (we likely hadn’t seen each other since that afternoon when we had spent hours together playing baseball somewhere in the neighborhood), and the favorite All-Star Game tradition of them all for us was when we watched the game at Chris’ house and his mother, Mrs. Pat Ruppenkamp served her homemade root beer, which I swear I can still taste today.
We just loved baseball, and we lived baseball. We were the very same demographic that Major League Baseball claims to be going after now with all of their stupid uniforms (more on that later) and all of the rules changes in the game.
That we still love baseball all of these years later, in spite of Commissioner Rob Manfred, kind of indicates that someone at MLB in the 1960s was doing something right.
The All-Star Game was an Event; it was a big deal. It was right up there with the World Series, and then the League Championship Series when they came to be in 1969 because it was about nothing but baseball – the greatness of baseball and the greatest baseball had to offer.
Now … not so much, though I am pretty excited that the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Paul Skenes is going to start the game for the National League just a little over one year after being drafted out of college, making him just the fifth rookie pitcher to start the All-Star Game and the first Pirates pitcher since 1975 (Jerry Reuss) to do so.
On top of that, the American League starter will be the Baltimore Orioles’ Corbin Burnes, who will be the first Orioles pitcher to make the start since Steve Stone in 1980, so that’s pretty exciting for baseball fans here in our area, even though both of them will likely go just one inning.
Otherwise, what I’m afraid we’re going to see tonight is just more of the made-for-TV fairy dust MLB has used to litter what was once one of its greatest events and greatest traditions.
For instance, one of the biggest charms of the All-Star Game for nearly a century was that each player wore the uniform of the team and the city he was representing, with the visiting league wearing its road grays and the home league wearing its home whites, which was not only a pride thing for the teams and their fans, but for the respective MLB cities as well, whose names were on front of many of the uniforms.
Now the MLB robber barons design those gawdawful matching “American” and “National” softball uniforms for the players to wear, hoping suckers will go online to buy them
They look like hell and nobody seems to like them or the idea of them, beginning with the players, but even though MLB says it is trying to attract new fans, it never listens to the fans it has had for generations of lifetimes.
Oh, and wearing different uniforms, being on the same team and working together for the same cause? I believe that’s called diversity, something else MLB claims to want. Yet, by MLB’s actions, that certainly does not seem to be the case.
The demise of the All-Star Game, of course, began under the original weasel commissioner Bud Selig following the infamous 2002 tie in Milwaukee and then the “This One Counts” nonsense, which was the concoction of Fox Sports, which, naturally, airs the All-Star Game.
The All-Star Game always counted, long before the days when postseason home field had its short-lived existence in the matter. It counted and it mattered because it mattered to the players, who played the game hard and with pride. They played for the honor of their league, and they played the game to win for their league, as Pete Rose and Ray Fosse would have told you after the great 1970 All-Star classic.
But now, if the All-Star Game is tied after nine innings, it will be decided by – and I am not making this up – a Home Run Derby rather than by extra innings, with three players from each team getting three swings apiece, with coaches pitching to them.
In other words, travel team batting practice …
This is the Rob Manfred culture of baseball.
And, yes, it stinks.
He hates baseball because he doesn’t get baseball.
It shows in every poor decision he makes.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X at @MikeBurkeMDT