| Most certainly, I am cursed. How
many of you came back to work today after the beautiful (except for those in central
Texas) four-day weekend to what would, without a doubt, prove to be a daunting task that
you had to take care of first on your to-do list? That’s what I faced, walking into
work today. I knew heading into it that I had this column to write. I even tried to think
about it during the weekend — what could I write? But nothing came to mind. So here I
sat, racking my brain, when I thought of something, finally.
I thought of baseball’s upcoming All-Star Game, which happens tomorrow. I think
it’s completely amazing that baseball, once but no longer America’s so-called
pastime, can attract so many more fans and viewers of a single all-star exhibition than
the NFL can.
Now, before you jump all over me for being too pompous and too biased toward football,
hear me out. Personally, I fall into the same category as most sports fans who like
football and baseball: I love Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game and don’t
really care much about watching the NFL’s Pro Bowl. I’m into it, but don’t
make me sit down and watch it.
But why is that? Shouldn’t it be the same? Should I not care about both? I mean,
neither game counts. You can’t root for your team, but you can root for an assemblage
of players from your team’s conference or league. Neither the All-Star Game nor the
Pro Bowl does what the NHL does, which is to divide its All-Stars into players from North
America and those from around the world. At least in that game you can be quasi-political
or quasi-patriotic in your cheering.
Another way in which the two games are the same is that the players are out there
having a good time more than playing their butts off. Sure, they play hard, but they might
be giving 100 percent instead of 110 percent. Think Randy Johnson meets John Kruk a few
years back.
Neither game has any "real" drama. Yes, you might see a game-winning drive in
the Pro Bowl or a last-inning comeback in the All-Star Game, but you always quickly
remember that the game doesn’t count. Sure, I cheered when Cal Ripken Jr. hit that
home run in his last All-Star appearance, but his final real game would have held more
meaning for me.
So why is it that people get worked up to see the All-Star Game and not the Pro Bowl?
Well, I have a few thoughts on this.
The top reason, I think, is the timing. The Pro Bowl occurs one week after the Super
Bowl, the sport's biggest game of the year. Even the super die-hard fans are a bit burned
out on the game and need to move on. The All-Star Game occurs almost exactly in the middle
of the baseball season, during the dog days of summer when fans are almost begging for a
story line to follow. Baseball’s trading deadline and stretch run haven’t even
begun to register much, and the fans are hungry. So the All-Star Game feeds them.
Another reason is location, location, location. The Pro Bowl, every year, is in Hawaii.
Boring. Sure, the NFL fans in Hawaii enjoy it, but the NFL needs to look at Major League
Baseball for guidance here. How much does the traveling nature of the All-Star Game affect
my interest? Enough that I and my brother (neither of whom is making the big bucks)
shelled out $1,000 each the past two seasons to buy split-season tickets for the White Sox
(and will shell out another $500 apiece next year) to get a top chance at buying All-Star
Game tickets in 2003 at Comiskey Park. That’s pretty influential.
Also, the extremes of talent on each team make baseball’s All-Star Game that much
better. This is the controversial thought, so pay attention. In baseball, the difference
between a last-place team and a contender is so much greater than that same gap in the
NFL. For example, take the gap between the Lions and the Packers or Bears. It’s quite
a gap, yes. But it’s much smaller than the difference between the Devil Rays and the
Yankees or Red Sox. There are a million reasons and factors, which is a column for another
publication, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The point is, fans who have been
stuck watching the Devil Rays want to see the Yankees, Red Sox, Mariners, Diamondbacks,
Braves, etc., play. The All-Star Game lets them root for a team full of studs, something
they may not have but could someday, in their views. The Pro Bowl does the same, but
because of the smaller gap between teams, it just doesn’t have the same meaning.
Finally, I think the big interest is a residual thing. Baseball’s fans still come
out in droves for the All-Star Game and all the festivities that surround it because our
predecessors came out in droves to see the big-timers of their day. TV didn’t exist.
You couldn’t flip to ESPN and watch Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb or Cy Young, and if your team
wasn’t in the same league as them, you couldn’t see them play in person. The
All-Star Game allowed National League fans to see American League players and vice versa.
The NFL is a TV league. The two grew up hand in hand, and that fact and the
cross-conference play have allowed fans to see the other conference’s all-stars
firsthand, giving the Pro Bowl a lot less punch in that area.
Now I have to plan where I’m going to watch the Home Run Derby tonight. Why I
would want to watch All-Star players hit lobbed baseballs into the night, I don’t
know. But I just do, and I will certainly be ready to watch the actual All-Star Game
tomorrow. |
