All Americana

Over the last few years I have noticed a pervasive cynicism among baseball fans with regard to the annual All-Star Game. Actually, that cynicism often feels like annoyance, or even anger, and fans aren't alone: the media seems, for the most part, to concur - or, at least, most every baseball writer seems to have some big ideas to improve it somehow or another.

Perhaps it is the efforts of Commissioner Bud Selig to make the game relevant as a competitive contest by attaching home field advantage in the World Series to its outcome - and, the attendant "This Time It Counts" marketing campaign that is the greenhouse for this antipathy. Bud has surely proven himself fully capable of pissing off fans during his tenure as the game's czar.

Or, maybe it is a collective, misplaced anger about steroids. Certainly, considering the venue of this year's game on July 10th, San Francisco, and the close proximity of one of the National League squad's starting outfielders to a certain preeminent record, that isn't outside the realm.

Myself, I still love the game almost as much now as I did when I was eight or nine - and, I watched it, then, with reverence.

I can remember how much of an event the All-Star Game was in my house. My brother and I had it marked on the calendar for months ahead of time, and our anticipation of the day rivaled that usually reserved for birthdays, Christmas and that afternoon we would go school shopping every year and pick up a few new pairs of Toughskins. And, like Christmas morning, the game had to be enjoyed in your pajamas.

The best part of the game, for us, was the introduction of the players. Something about the solemn ritual of lining all those great ballplayers up and introducing every single one of them reinforced the import of the game in our lives. As a kid, watching each player step out to tip his hat, you could sense that these men had a mythic quality about them: they were the most special of a special breed.

Perhaps the mystique of the All-Star Game, in the end, has been robbed to one degree or another by the massive exposure that baseball has received over the last 25 years. I lay in bed every night and talk with my older boys, and during the summer we always have a game on in the background, muted: we have a choice of three, sometimes four or five, games to watch on any given night. And, then, when the games are over, there's Baseball Tonight, and Sportscenter. When I was a kid, the only time you saw another team's players was when they played the home team, or on Game of the Week or This Week in Baseball.

And, while the All Star Game, like baseball, has probably taken a popularity hit because of steroids, it can be argued, ironically, that the genesis of the use of performance enhancing drugs in baseball lies not in greed, but pride, and the All-Star Game can play a role in that analysis. Isn't it possible that some or all of the players who took drugs were as enthralled by the Midsummer Classic as I, and wanted, as much as anything else, maybe more, to be one of those guys stepping out and tipping their hat? That an opportunity to be one of those mythic characters of a child's eye would be worth jeopardizing one's good health and good name?

Probably a stretch, but it's something to consider. In the absence of any explanation whatsoever, we are all left to wonder why.

While we will probably skip the Home Run Derby again this year, my boys and I will most certainly be in front of the television Tuesday night, in our pajamas, to see the player introductions, and watch, at least, the first few innings of the 78th rendering of the All-Star Game. I hope, perhaps in vain, that they can appreciate the majesty of this event in substantially the same way I did some 30 years ago, despite the passage of those years and the changes that have taken place along the way.

And, if they are as captivated by the game as I was lo those many years ago, they will continue to watch the game every year, even after they realize that the men who play in it are just human beings, prone to the same foibles and failings as everyone else, long after they come to the realization that no particular moment in any All-Star Game will necessarily be one that they can remember years later. Why? Because watching the game will take them back to a time when it just felt good to be up past nine watching a ballgame with your Dad, back to a time when you didn't have bills and jobs and traffic and high cholesterol, you just had a moment...and a ballgame.

Pete Rose and Roberto Clemente played in this game. Tug and Seaver, Boggs and Kirby and Tony Gwynn. Schmitty and Bull, Blue and Koufax. Babe Ruth. Dizzy Dean. The All-Star Game is all of them, it is important in its own right as an American institution and a showcase for our greatest game. It is relevant because it has the power to take us back in time, to help us remember who we were.

Yes, this one, like all the others, will most definitely count - just, not in quite the way Bud Selig may have imagined.