This always was my favorite day of the summer, All-Star Game on Tuesday. I would spend the morning carefully creating an extra-large scorecard with black magic marker, one I needed a tray table to be able to use later on that night. I had color-coded pens to properly score the game. I would track every pitch. I would marvel at every matchup.
Now at this juncture, in the interest of full disclosure, I should probably come clean about a couple of things about the version of me that prowled the hardscrabble Wiffle Ball lawns of Long Island from, say, 1974 through 1980 or so:
1. I was a geek.
2. I was a baseball geek.
3. I was a baseball geek who thought the best thing in the world to be was a baseball geek.
4. I was an only child. I was able to roam unchecked, at maximum geekiness, all across the summer, with no over-it siblings to tell me otherwise.
5. My friends were all baseball geeks, too. Some of them were even geekier than me, though it’s hard to think, all these years later, how that’s even mathematically possible.
So I get it: I probably was the absolute target market for the All-Star Game in its glory days, when men were men and the players actually cared who won the game and it mattered to the world — or at least my corner of the world — that Thurman Munson and Lee Mazzilli got their at-bats, when I firmly believed — against all evidence to the contrary — that the American League would, indeed, someday win an All-Star Game again.
And I get this, too: Kids are still geeks. Some of them are even baseball geeks. But that proud geekiness is manifested in other ways: Through video games and virtual seasons, thanks to television packages in which indulgent parents can bring every player and every team into the living room — cutting by a good 50 percent the intrigue of seeing players you almost never saw — and thanks to every-day interleague games included in those packages, which takes a good chunk of the remaining 50 percent with it.
So, OK, it’s never going to be 1978 again. You can barely find “Happy Days” reruns on television anymore. “Grease” is not only no longer the word anymore, it barely registers in the pop-culture lexicon of anyone under age — gulp — 40. If you introduce the argument of “rock versus disco” in a schoolyard … well, you’re probably far too old to be at a schoolyard anyway. Walk away before they call the cops.
And, yes, the All-Star Game probably is not the coolest thing in the world anymore.
And you know something else?
It shouldn’t matter. And probably doesn’t. All the hand-wringing that accompanies everything baseball does, and doesn’t do, so much of it attached to the All-Star Game? It’s still a worthy part of the summer. It’s still a perfect piece of programming for a Tuesday summer night, even if there are now a thousand other channels and a thousand other choices.
Will you watch all nine innings? Will you even watch nine pitches? Maybe you will. Maybe you won’t. But in its way, the All-Star Game is a lot like Channel 13: You may not turn the channel there much anymore. But it’s good to know you could if you wanted to.
Is that ever going to be a marketing slogan?
No. And it shouldn’t be. And, yes, baseball should continue to try to do whatever it can to get more eyeballs, and younger eyeballs, to both this fake game and to the others that matter. And, sure, maybe there’s a dearth of geeky kids willing to keep track of every pitch of every All-Star Game. We keep hearing they don’t exist anymore.
Still, I’d like to think they’re wrong.
Whack Back at Vac
Gregory Boudreau: The older you get it takes more time to heal from these injuries. Let’s face it Derek Jeter is, what, 39? If he were 22 it might be a different story. Brian Cashman made some good pickups in Overbay, Hafner, Ichiro, Wells to name a few. Where would the Yanks be without them?
Vac: A glance across town is all you need to answer that one.
John Martin: If the Wilpons and Mr. Katz want to send their disgusted and battered fan base a thank you for their support they should take the opportunity Tuesday, right before Tom Seaver throws out the first pitch in the All-Star Game, to announce that a statue of Mr. Seaver has been commissioned and will be placed outside Citi Field to be unveiled opening day next year.
Vac: Some things almost make too much sense, right?
@JamesBaxter9: I’m watching YES and David Cone is droning on about SABREmetrics. Why can’t he be more like ex-mates Hernandez and Darling and just “talk baseball?”
@MikeVacc: For better or worse, in 2013, that’s very much a part of “talking baseball” and probably will be from now on.
Richard Siegelman: If the Knicks are foolish enough to sign Ron Artest [aka Metta World Peace] with all his baggage, they might as well also re-sign Stephon Marbury and Eddy Curry with all of their carry-ons.
Vac: Then can Jared Jeffries III be far behind?
Vac’s Whacks
The Royals and the Pirates have combined for three winning seasons — three! — since 1992. Yet it sure seems the good people of Kansas City and Pittsburgh have reserved all of their baseball fury for Robinson Cano and David Wright. Perfect.
* The Nets have so many players now they’re going to have to hold open tryouts to see who makes the travel team.
* Shouldn’t the Yasiel Puig issue be dead now? If the “fans” on whose behalf everybody seems so eager to speak really wanted him in so badly, they would have elected him. Obviously, they don’t. And they didn’t.
* Don’t think for a second the Yankees haven’t already checked out if there’s a Russian baseball league that would be willing to take Alex Rodriguez as a package deal with Ilya Kovalchuk.