Apparently Major League Baseball held its All-Star Game recently, and evidently the American League rang victorious with a 4-0 yawner against the National League.
It seems that the parts of America that were not overwhelmed by biblical floodwaters and hellacious Canadian wildfire smoke, actually stumbled upon baseball’s “Midsummer Classic” on television while searching in vain for whatever seemingly random outlet was broadcasting that day’s World Cup match.
Weary sports channel surfers who landed on Fox’s All-Star extravaganza managed to squirm through a circus sideshow of fireworks and silly graphics and inane interviews, a stone-silent, slightly mawkish “Stand Up to Cancer” demonstration that took up a half inning, and a reverent, if interruptive, late-inning version of the uber-jingoist “God Bless America.”
When was “God Bless America,” an Irving Berlin jingle that ranks with “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” “There’s No Business Like Show Business” and “White Christmas” as among his best known, made the reserve national anthem? And all patriotic fervor aside, why are we inserting such a meaningful paean into the middle of a game that is meaningless even by baseball standards.
Who made GBA our second national anthem? If we needed a backup song — which we don’t — why not “America the Beautiful”? “This Land is Your Land” would be a dandy. Some wags might even argue that The Temptations’ “Ball of Confusion” might be appropriate given these strange times.
We get to vote for American League reserve catcher Dillon Dingler but not the reserve anthem as recognized by Major League Baseball?
And why do we stand solemnly, hands on hearts and fighting a beery haze, for an imposter National Anthem in the middle of the game? We can thank former Commissioner Bud Selig, who personally ended the 2002 All-Star Game when both teams ran out of pitchers, and who brought us instant replay, apparently to take the game out of umpires’ hands and at the same time slow down proceedings, for “God Bless America.”
Bud made a better commissioner than musical director, and that is to damn with faint praise.
Meanwhile, this year’s American League All-Star victory led the junior circuit (the National League was founded in 1876, 25 years before the American) to a 49-45-2 historical record in the increasingly “can miss” sporting event of the year.
Baseball’s All-Star Game is far more watchable than those of its peer sports, football and basketball. Again, that’s speaking of damning by faint praise.
Even the selection process for baseball’s showcase is verkakte. In the old days, ushers at the ballpark distributed dozens of punch card ballots at ballgames, and fans used car keys or fingernails to push out the tab adjacent to the player who had earned the vote.
There were no restrictions on the number of times you could vote. Fans grabbed as many ballots as ushers would surrender, punched them appropriately (no hanging chad jokes here) and inserted them into randomly placed ballot boxes. Team managers, the skippers who had managed the two leagues’ previous World Series, picked their league’s pitching staffs.
The voting system now, however, is an arcane two-phase process that only the most serious fan with high-dose Adderall prescriptions can actually follow past the point of indifference.
Future scholars left to decipher the current All-Star selection method will have to discover a Rosetta Stone to figure out just how Toronto second baseman Ernie Clement, a fine player but hardly a household name, was this year’s leading vote getter.
Indeed, there was an All-Star game on July 14, it was played until around 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, after an 8 p.m. first pitch. Millions watched, or at least had the game on in the background until East Coasters faded off into sleep.
But the 5 million households that were tuned in to the game in 2026 pales in comparison with the game’s viewership peaks in 1967 (14 million); 1976 and 1978 (18 million); 1980 and 1982 (20 million) seems to display that even Major League Baseball’s showcase game has drifted into more sports irrelevance and farther into an annoying space for network antics and player/announcer bad wisecracks.
For all the gimmickry, the All-Star Game is just not entertaining.
The game used to mean something, at least to devotees. Old-timers remember Pete Rose’s colossal hit on catcher Ray Fosse at home plate to win the 1970 contest. Still more remember Oakland outfielder Reggie Jackson’s gargantuan home run off Pirates hurler Dock Ellis to win the 1971 game.
The game is more than ever a mere footnote to the season, a break in the calendar that deprives us of real baseball for four days.
It used to be fun.
But the All-Star Game has become a bore, a made-for-tv pseudo-event along the lines of “Dancing with the Stars,” but without the intrigue and high drama.
At least it’s not the National Football League Pro-Bowl.
And that’s to damn with faint praise.