Lincicome: All Star Games may be silly, but they're still great resume boosts
All-Star Games are, of course, silly, all of them, pointless and harmless, unless someone gets hurt, which is why the NFL banned tackling, and Hawaii for that matter, no reason given.
The NBA chooses sides, teams identified by the name of the player doing the choosing, like Team LeBron or Team Giannis, and then gets out of the way as each side tries to score 200 points. Silly, as I said.
Baseball has remained more or less itself, with pitchers pitching and batters batting and runners running. In baseball it does mean something to be an All-Star, even if you don't get to wear your own uniform.
Nevermind that stars that matter - Aaron Judge of the Yankees, Mike Trout of the Angels, to name a couple - won't be there and that others may need to show two forms of ID to get into the stadium, or that most starters are gone after three innings and pitchers last two at the most, it is the honor that counts.
For a while baseball tried to give its game an identifiable purpose, the winner getting home-field advantage in the World Series, an incentive too vague to matter to anyone playing or managing or watching on a midsummer evening.
Viewership has dropped for All-Star Games across all sports, the most recent NBA and MLB offerings the least watched on record, and yet they refuse to give up.
What most sports have tried to do in order to pique audience attention - and the interest of the competitors as well - is to make the sideshows more interesting than the real show, the so-called "skills competition," like slam dunks or 3-point shooting in the NBA or fastest skater or hardest shot in the NHL or, silly of sillies, something called Kick Tac Toe in the NFL.
The silliest juice to the baseball All-Star recipe is something called Celebrity Softball, assumed to be a softball game played by celebrities. Checking the roster I see Skylar Astin and JoJo Siwa so I'm afraid I'll have to take their word for it.
Clearly the highlight of baseball's All-Star celebration is the Home Run Derby, described this year as "engrossing as the All-Star Game itself," where we are promised "electric performances of prodigious power."
Top seeded for electricity and prodigality (spellcheck says, yes, that is the word) is the White Sox's own junior, Luis Robert, also on the roster as an outfielder, more likely there to be electric and prodigious than at the plate.
The Cubs' contributions are less visible, pitcher Marcus Stroman and shortstop Dansby Swanson eschewing the game for injury and intransigence, leaving pitcher Justin Steele to lift whatever needs lifting.
Still, All-Star is a nice line to add to the resume, like an honors list in a yearbook.
And so it is in the middle of most seasons for most sports a pause is taken to identify the best players by position, not a revelation as much as a validation, generally reflecting what the standings already have confirmed.
This helps explain why the greatest vote-getter this year was Atlanta outfielder Ronald Acuna, another junior, who is truly a slugging, base stealing, hot hitting wonder, the centerpiece of the league leading Braves, who may clinch the playoffs by August.
This does not explain the American League top vote-getter, hitter/pitcher/icon Shohei Ohtani of the Angels, playing on a team unfit for his uniqueness, as his coming free agency overwhelms all else in the coming All-Star Game in Seattle. Even the Cubs and White Sox might be allowed to imagine his joining Sweet Home Chicago, one side or the other.
It is not going to happen, but for a few days the notion can be lumped in with wishes and wants as the rest of baseball thinks ahead while the Cubs and Sox think and think, like the Rodin statue, never moving.
This All-Star Game comes down essentially to the Rangers against the Braves, likely a preview of something vital down the way.
To again quote the hype literature from Seattle, the game showcases "a new generation of All-Stars taking major league baseball to new heights with more on-field energy and excitement than ever before."
I will hold them to that.