Predictably, Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter — the two most famous players on world's most famous baseball team — were voted into starting roles in Tuesday's All-Star Game. But to the surprise of some, the duo chose to skip the festivities in favor of three days of rest.
To those shocked by their choice, I have a message: this isn't your father's All-Star Game.
Jeter, days off a DL-stint for a calf injury, and Rodriguez, with an apparent minor meniscus tear, made a choice that might be galling to some, but we should have seen coming.
There was a time when All-Star Games were unique. Ted Williams would get five at-bats in a game. Pete Rose would hustle on the base paths. Pitchers would go through the opposing batting order more than once. Even as recently as the mid-'90s, John Kruk stood in against his left-handed counterpart, Randy Johnson, only to have his first look at the Big Unit's fastball sail above his head and set his heart racing. But as of 2011, two main things have changed, making the All-Star Game a painfully antiquated relic.
1. Interleague Play
The merits of Bug Selig's AL-NL experiment have been weighed often in other quarters. But one clear downside is that cross-league matchups of teams and individuals are far less rare. The cool thing about Kruk standing in against Randy Johnson was that you understood Kruk had only second-hand knowledge of this towering beast of the other league. It was like he was a baseball tourist sampling a dish he knew would never be replicated back home.
But now the uniqueness is gone. Players change teams and leagues far more frequently than they did a generation ago, and, moreover, Interleague Play cyclically exhausts new pitcher-batter combinations. The All-Star Game just does not have that market cornered anymore.
2. The Great Tie of 2002
With the 2002 All-Star Game tied at seven in the 11th inning, both squads had their last pitcher in the game. After meeting with both managers, Selig decided that if the 11th ended without lead, the game would end as a tie.
Selig frequently gets a raw deal for this. Presented with two bad options, he made a pragmatic choice and more or less stood behind it. I often wonder if reaction would have been different had the game gone 15 or 16 innings. Even in 2002, the game was clearly an exhibition, so why force everyone to go through the motions?
However, right or wrong, Selig's Draw made two realities about the All-Star Game perfectly clear. First, it resembled a regular season baseball game as much as the WWE resembles Olympic wrestling (Kurt Angle aside). The prevailing philosophy about the game had been that while the first half or two-thirds of the game was light-hearted and irreverent, both sides "got serious" when the outcome was in question in the final innings. The 2002 game seriously altered that framework.
Baseball, as defined by its own rules and common sense, cannot end in a tie. The 2002 game ended in a tie. Thus, the 2002 All-Star Game was not really baseball, and because this scenario could happen any year, none of them were.
Secondly, the outcome of this near-baseball exhibition is a lower priority than all of its participants leaving in the same condition they arrived: proud to have been there and completely healthy. Freddy Garcia and Vicente Padilla, the two pitchers when the 2002 game ended, were both starters. They each only pitched two innings and could certainly have thrown more. But with health as such a focus, the tie sent a clear message: we would rather change the rules of the game than start to risk a player's pristine condition.
These two evolutions of the All-Star Game — dilution of the AL-NL matchup scarcity and the admission of the game's priorities — make Jeter and Rodriguez's decision to stay away not only understandable but even deserving of praise. If either player had gone to Arizona, he certainly would have told AL manager Ron Washington that there were several limitations on what he could do, if he could do anything at all. Instead, by not attending, both players relieve Washington of having to balance the line between risking injury aggravation and embarrassing the player as well as open a roster spot for a willing participant.
Jeter, especially, has taken heat for not playing considering he has been off the DL for a week and just earned his 3,000th career hit. But in an era where every star athlete's motives and attitudes are reviewed by a blood-thirsty public, finding fault in the Yankee shortstop's decision is difficult. Jeter is not only coming off his first DL trip in nearly a decade, but he is in the last throes of his physical stardom. If he thinks three days of not playing baseball will best prepare him for the rest of this season, his priorities and actions seem to be aligned.
Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez did not make the All-Star Game irrelevant. Their absence is just a symptom of the game's chronic maladies.
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