no, i'm not talking about my life and my shameless efforts to curry favor. i'm talking about all-star games. at the request of he who must be gratuitously footnoted and occasionally obeyed, i am weighing in on this rant...
all-star games, while nice in principle, are total crap. aside from the show-boat events like the dunk contest or the homerun derby, those games are just another chance for the pretty faces of the various leagues to get more camera time, more time to endorse the crap they sell, more time for the tax base of the host city to be enriched, etc. and for what? home field advantage? in an age where cheap air-fare and the horrible pervasiveness of expansion teams makes it fairly easy for the average person to go watch the game of their choice, all-star games are pointless.
not to mention that, as aristotle and de toqueville pointed out, people, when left to their own devices, usually act like pin-heads. take the upcoming baseball all-star ballot, for instance. nomar (now i know he was a red sox player, but not any more...so he gets no protection from me), who's on the DL at the moment with an unfortunate injury, but only had a .157 batting average when he got placed on the DL. i think i know some high school freshman who could get a .157. that voting isn't about putting the best of the best forward, it's about promoting who we like best, which is totally different.
all i'm saying is that if we want all star games to be like the miss america pageant, and just pick the prettiest, nicest, most outgoing players, then let's just own that, and deal with the mediocre game that will ensue. on the other hand, if the all star games are about picking the best players to play against each other in a non-division game, then why not let the coaches and players do the picking, and just let us stick to the hot dog eating, beer swilling, heckling from the stands, and watching, just watching, amazing feats of athleticism. that's all i'm saying.
and just to really make some people mad, i'll go ahead and say this-- NASCAR IS NOT A SPORT. yes, it is physically taxing. yes, it is difficult to drive a car 250 miles an hour around a tiny circle and only make left turns and avoid hitting the other cars on the track. but it's not a sport. if you think it is, you are wrong. putting NASCAR in a class with basketball (GO SPURS GO!) or baseball or even freaking curling hurts my heart. it does more than that, it almost offends me on a personal level. i mean, if you are going to classify NASCAR as a sport, i want my standing saturday night babysitting gig with The Four Horsemen considered a sport as well.
the deep throat post is coming...
mil besos--rmg
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