Eighteen Legs and Catches Flies

(I am reprising a previous paean to MLB's All-Star Game to honor it. Sort of.) 

Today's title is the set-up to one of my favorite baseball jokes of all time-'What has eighteen legs and catches flies? A baseball team.' A knee slapper of the first order. 

The All-Star Game is on Fox TV tonight starting at eight and as both they and MLB have been saying in recent years, 'this time, it counts' because whichever league wins the game assures home field advantage for their team should they reach the World Series.

As a child, I remember watching TWO All-Star games every season and those guys played for blood. One year, on a grainy black and white TV, while watching with my dad in his chair the afternoon game, somebody threw at Willie Mays and it really got crowded on that little tiny TV screen (baseball players fight like girls, or like girls of my age fought-not those UFC women). I cannot imagine that happening tonight.

I wish I could say the same for Fox TV coverage of it as well. I don't dislike them when they televise NFL games mainly because I don't watch them. But I adore the ebb and flow, the game within the game, the nuance and the romance of everything to do with baseball and Fox grabs some hip-hop with auto tune music to slide underneath all the pictures, dawg, and thinks it's just off the hook. Nope, ain't dope and I can't cope. No soap.

Even though I know Fox is NOT responsible for it, I blame them (anyway) for the Home Run Derby and something that was streamed (rather than steamed) apparently last night, the MLB Celebrity Softball Game (how did we live without this all these decades?). 

I have nothing kind to say about the latter. As for the former, I know, "who doesn't like Home Run Derby?" No one, to include me but if we continue to allow it to be part of the All-Star Experience then we should have a game of H-O-R-S-E to decide the NBA finals or perhaps moments prior to the coin flip to start Super Bowl Whatever RomanNumeralItWasThisTime, there should have been a punt, pass and kick contest with the winner getting a touchdown and point after to begin the game or a field goal and the ball to start each half. Winner's choice.

Do NOT roll your eyes at me!

Of course, both of my examples are utterly ludicrous but so, too, is the attraction the Lords of Baseball have manufactured. I really can't expect any better from a management model that created the Designated Hitter, another excruciatingly stupid idea created by people who secretly hate baseball and want to kill it.

Coverage of the All-Star Game starts at eight, Daylight Savings, tonight on Fox and goes until somebody wins unless the two teams run out of pitchers. Should that happen I'm hoping we insist that the designated hitters have a Ninja Pants Off Dance-off. 
-bill kenny