all star game

all star game

Absent from the endless discussions about how to improve baseball's All-Star game was the one that would solve all the problems immediately.

End it.

Seriously. Would anyone other than Bud Selig notice? Or care? And just imagine if the idea gets traction across the sports spectrum. If the pro leagues really want to do something for fans, other than pick their pockets, keep the breaks in midseason and have the players perform community service — e.g., stage sports clinics in their hometowns.

For one thing, they might be better attended than the All-Star game. Almost a fifth of the players named to baseball's two squads had already voted no with their feet, electing to park them somewhere besides Phoenix on Tuesday night, rendering the National League's 5-1 win an even more meaningless exercise than usual. And the problem wasn't just a lack of quantity, but quality.

Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter might be the face of baseball, but his body was already in R&R mode. He sneaked off to Florida with girlfriend Minka Kelly, enraging all those commentators who exhausted their store of superlatives praising him over the weekend, the TV executives at FOX who spent hours dreaming up all those promotional tie-ins, and who knows how many of the 4 million who penciled Jeter into the AL starting lineup.