Selig Gets The All-Star Game Right, In Spite of Himself

TGF.net ^ | 07-22-03 | Jeff Kallman

[ChairmanoftheBored]

Somewhere in his considerable baseball education, for all he sought to adapt and evoke the old Dodger Way, during and after his years in that august organization, Mike Scioscia must have learned his most important baseball lesson from Sparky Anderson.

“We try every way we can do to kill this game,” said Anderson, the unchallenged virtuoso of the baseball double negative, “but for some reason nothing nobody does never hurts it.” Those words were never made truer than by the way Scioscia managed the All-Star Game while Dusty Baker proved, in the same game, why Scioscia last fall won a World Series Baker practically had in his pocket.

First, Bud Selig – either out of his own often-enough maligned mind, or under the impetus of Fox Sports master builder Ed Goren – decided that the way to fix what a pair of asleep at the switch managers broke even worse in last year’s game was that This Time It Should Count. Winner gets his league the World Series home-field advantage. If baseball had a testier field issue since the designated hitter and the wild card, I’m lost for finding it right now.

Then came the gamesmanship behind the game. Japanese fans stuffing the ballot box for Hideki Matsui. (The last time fans played that little game – for the Cincinnati Reds in the mid-1950s – the fans lost the All-Star vote for almost two decades). The Oakland Athletics, reputedly, ordering all 25 of their players to vote for Ramon Hernandez. (In the players’ phase of the voting, Hernandez got 39 other players’ votes). The same Athletics not bothering to tell Barry Zito he was too spent to work a bit in the Game, until after Zito did a Chicago press conference for the Game. Much speculation that the Zito fumble in part was a conspiracy to sneak Roger Clemens into the All-Star picture in his final season. Baker making a minor fool of himself, explaining why he picked his own Kerry Wood over Florida Marlins rookie sensation Dontrelle Willis, even though Willis had the better record and almost half the ERA of Woods.

“I haven’t seen him pitch,” whizzed the Lizard.

How precious is that? I haven’t seen Babe Ruth, Lefty Grove, Satchel Paige, Jackie Robinson, or Ted Williams play, either. But did I have to, to know how and how great they did it? Which part of Willis’s 2.13 ERA on an 8-1 record, compared to Woods’ 3.36 on an 8-4, through July 6, did Baker not get? Bet you didn’t think one of the lessons Baker would learn in Chicago was how to work it like a political patronage machinist.

Speaking of Babe Ruth, there was the Barry Bonds non-scandal. Why, the noive of that guy. Suggesting he “wiped out” Babe Ruth as a slugger. You’d have thought Bonds had admitted plotting to restore Saddam Hussein, the way some – including the Babe Ruth Museum – harrumphed over that one. Well, ok, Bonds shouldn’t have said he’d wiped out Ruth as a slugger, since he hasn’t. But he has been a better ballplayer than the Babe. Ruth had two tools. Bonds has five. He’s been a better fielder, has a better range factor in the field, and he has been a hugely better baserunner who has been far less likely to cost his team baserunners and runs than Ruth was. (Ruth at best was an average outfielder with an average throwing arm, and he ran the bases like a cement truck with two flat tires.) He has also played against the absolute and unrestricted best talent of his time, too. The Bambino didn’t. And Bonds hasn’t played all but one season of his career in home parks you could call insane-in-the-brain power hitter friendly, either.

Even Bonds knows, where it counts, that he will never knock the Bambino off his perch as maybe the greatest idol baseball has yet known. What the hey, he probably won’t even dislodge his godfather Willie Mays as a baseball idol, either. But here is a fact for you to ponder: The worst you can say about Bonds is that he is a self-possessed, prima donnish sourpuss. Maybe that’s not your idea of a baseball great. Yet a player today inspires demands to revive the guillotine if he is caught even thinking about being a womanizing carouser who hangs with mobsters, gets disciplined (including fines and suspensions) on a semi-regular basis by his team and/or his league, feels as much at home with hookers as homers, and even hangs his manager out the window of a speeding train by his ankles. Babe Ruth still gets laughs for having actually done those things. Is this a great country, or what?

But I digress. Try though they might, the scandalmongers, gamesmen, gimmickers, and bumblers couldn’t put off The Game forever. First, though, came Surprise Number One, the night before. Or would you have predicted Garret Anderson winning the Home Run Derby from anyone in the field, never mind Albert Pujols? It’s not that Anderson is anything less than a very deserving All-Star, nor is he anything less than a reliably run producing power hitter, even if his on-base percentage could stand some improvement. But expecting Anderson to win that hardware was only slightly less surreal than expecting him to turn out the All-Star Game’s most valuable player.

There was the strong, silent Anaheim Angel, in the bottom of The Game’s sixth inning, with Alex Rodriguez on base ahead of him, and Woody Williams of the St. Louis Cardinals on the mound. Don Corleone and Genco Abbandando could not have plotted this one better.

As Warner Wolf loves to say, let's go to the videotape: Game Six, 2002 World Series, the Giants leading, 5-0, and Baker lifted his gallant starter, Russ Ortiz, handing Ortiz the game ball before shooing him toward the dugout – in full view of Anderson and the Angels. They were so thrilled to see that kind of suggestiveness - game’s over, boys, might as well just get the next two innings over with - that the next Anaheim batter, first baseman Scott Spiezio, nine-ironed a three-run homer over the right field fence, starting the comeback that was finished when Anderson drove in what proved to be the Game Seven-winning runs the next night.

Now here was Anderson again, his usual becalmed self, with Baker, an impressively intelligent man, once again managing with hubris rather than sense. With the National League leading 5-0, he had rotated all but two of his prime starters out of the lineup by an inning before Anderson measured Williams. Game’s over, boys, might as well just get the next few innings over with.

Anderson of all people in the house needed no reminder of what wasn't over until it was over. He ripped a two-run homer into the right center field seats. 5-3, National League. And, once again, Baker had managed himself cleverly into a bind in the making. But Scioscia still had his guns to bring to town. The American League could send in Bret Boone for Alfonso Soriano, Jason Giambi for Carlos Delgado, Vernon Wells for Matsui, Ramon Hernandez for Jorge Posada, and still have A-Rod, Anderson, Edgar Martinez, and Ichiro in the game.

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