It’s All-Star time.  That wonderful mid-summer classic.  Really?  Wonderful?  Call me a cynic (I won’t argue) but today’s game doesn’t hold the same allure as days gone by.  Baseball, New York, Fox or Chevrolet (it’s kind of hard to tell who is responsible for this) are hosting a red carpet ride down 6th avenue in New York ending at Central Park.  It’s a mix of current stars and hall of famers.  It’s great to see some of my boyhood heroes, no matter how old they’re getting.  Why aren’t there anymore players like that nowadays?  Oh sure, Derek Jeter appears to be the face of baseball.  Josh Hamilton is a great story (his wife is hot!).  But nobody today can hold the jockstrap of those I grew up watching.  Watching Saturday baseball games on NBC was about all me and my dad had together.  My best friend was way more athletic than I so I kept a close eye on who he rooted for.  I may have picked them up from another, but I held onto those heroes as long as I could.

The interviewers are none other than the Slump-Buster himself, Mark Grace.  Does everybody remember his discussion about what he did whenever he was in a hitting slump?  Whichever town he was currently in, he would go to a bar, get lit, find the biggest woman he could find, and I quote, “Lay the wood to her.”  How classic is that?  And this guy is interviewing some of baseball’s royalty.  Fox has some bimbo named Charissa Thompson doing the other interviews.  She is quite a hottie, but dumb as a post.  She interviewed Jonathon Papelbon about the possible decision that he, and not Mariano Rivera closing the game, and he made a comment about needing to be in the Popemobile.  Ms. Thompson didn’t quite understand his analogy (that’s a comparison for those who are vocabularly challenged) and laughed it off saying it was some sort of technical thing.  Well, she doesn’t have to be smart.  Just looking at her is good enough.  Great legs.

Interviews have been done with such great players as George Brett, whose infamous Pine-tar incident was in…..New York.  Each new block, George gets the chant of “pine-tar; pine-tar”.  Gotta love those New York fans.  Mike Schmidt looks old next to Chase Utley, but man did that dude have a stick.  And at the hot corner, what a beast.

Heroes of old were so much fun to watch.  They consistently made the difficult look routine, and the impossible look spectacular.  Some of my favorites were Reggie Jackson, Rod Carew, Roberto Clemente, Hank Aaron and who I still will argue was the best baseball player ever….Willie Mays.  To watch these men play a game with such ease inspired every little boy with a glove to have dreams of becoming a major league player.  Hell, I used to wear #9 in Little League, Reggie Jackson’s number while he was with the A’s.

Players today, without a doubt, are much more the physical speciman than those who played long ago.  I can’t argue that but with technology as it is today, with the grind of the game, this is more of a requirement.  There’s something missing today though.  Something that leaves me somewhat empty.  I can’t relate.  Was it a little boy’s dream of wanting to be as good as his friend?  Wanting to be just like Willie, Henry or Reggie?  It’s hard to say.  Something back in those days seemed so pure.  Maybe a little innocent, or romantic about it?  OH MY GOD!!!!  The bimbo is interviewing the Hammer!  Just seeing him on TV brings chills down my spine.  Having the homerun record and the trials he endured were more than a lot of players now can handle.  He had to put up with death threats all the time.  Kind of makes rumors about banging Madonna seem like a walk in the park.  In fact, I wish somebody would accuse me of having an affair with Madonna.

Yankee Stadium is one of the last, grand cathederals left.  The history that will only be remembered in film and minds is some of what made baseball so great.  Moving to a new “Yankee Stadium” kind of seems hollow to me.  It’s just an example of how far baseball is moving away from the golden times.  As much as I loathe the Red Sox, Fenway should never be recreated or destroyed.  Same with Wrigley field.  Shlink Lincoln and I started to think about stadiums we would want to put on our Bucket List and those two are at the top.  Make things pure again.  I love the gesture of trying to link to the glorious past of baseball, but it may be too little too late.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 6:47 pm and is filed under MLB. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.