Before I get to my main point, I have two reasons why I love this year's team: 1 - Pablo "Little Money" Sando had a bunt base hit. Oh yes - the same Pablo who could be an O-lineman for the Niners, whose uni probably consists of 50 yards of fabric, and whose belly hangs out a bit far for a pro athlete. The same. Caught everyone off guard and Gold-Glover David Wright didn't even attempt a throw. Made me think of the days of Brett Butler - I seriously had just looked at a bunch of banners near the concession stands of Wilbur, Matt Williams, Dravecky, Bobcat, and the rest of the 80's-era guys. Ah. 2nd reason why this year's team gets me excited - Bochy attempted a suicide squeeze in a one-run game with Cain at the plate! He fouled it off, but I love it! Of course Cain ends up ripping a single up the middle anyway, but man - when was the last time you saw that? Not in the Flipe Alouuu era or Bake...hmmm, sounds like it goes back to da man, Roger Craig, since we last saw some squeezes. Awesome.
Ok, the real point of this post - the MLB All-Star Game is such a flippin fraud its ridiculous. We all know the existing problems - tie games, requirement that every crappy team has to send a player, the pitchers wussing out and not pitching, etc. etc. Well, the biggest reason, I think we can all agree on, is that the fans choose the starters. Fans are stupid, and are only picking their guys - duh. I do it too - how many times did I punch a card for Pedro Feliz or David Bell? Come on. Well, I have photographic and first-person testimony that things are out of control. At the game today they were encouraging everyone to 'vote Molina' for the All-Star Game...fine, we've got to have one guy, and Big Money is a stud, ok, fine. I'll pick up a 'ballot' (you'll get why I use quotes in a second) and punch it for him. But they went on to announce that if you filled out enough ballots to stack as high as your ticket is long, they'd give you a free Molina bobblehead. So people are stacked up everywhere filling out HUNDREDS of ballots EACH. See below:
See that stack! That's what I'm talking about - we stood there and watched these people waste an hour or so filling out all those ballots...
Then you had to stand in this huge line while they validated EVERY ONE of your ballots (as if this 'vote' has any credibility anymore):
I can assure you the picture does not do the insanity justice - the line starts on the left and goes back 100-150 people deep. And this was the short line! Around the corner was the main one that had to be at least 200 people waiting HOURS in line...to get a Molina bobblehead. Seriously.
So in conclusion, I've seen too much...the curtain has been pulled WAY too far back, and I'm disgusted. What a joke. They shouldn't even be allowed to use the word 'vote' anymore. I can't wait to hear the numbers in a few weeks - 'Molina has 650,000 votes!' What really kills me about this, besides that it makes the voting screwy is that all of these players have All-Star clauses in their contracts - we're purposefully stuffing the ballot box and guys are getting (or not getting) tens or hundreds of thousands of extra bucks. Insane.
An update - didn't see any 'Panda' gear at the game thank goodness. Probably still in production. Just wait.
That is madness!! And you realize, that while those donuts are waiting in line, there's a game going on out there--that they paid for in the first place! Madness.
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