These days, I honestly don’t give two shits about the MLB All-Star Game. You’d think that a baseball fan like myself would enjoy seeing “the best” players in baseball, playing in a single exhibition game, where fans get a chance to see some dream matchups between star pitchers versus star hitters.
That would be great when such a thing happens, and I’d really like someone to let me know when and if it ever does.
The All-Star Game is a pretty well-known mockery to professional sport these days, since it’s now become the furthest thing from a relaxed exhibition game for the fans. With a set of rules and guidelines, most importantly the aspect being that it “actually counts” in respect to the winning league getting home-field advantage in the World Series, it’s gone from a fun and leisurely baseball game into a tense, controversial event that always spawns the same arguments every single year.
Fans get to vote on the starting players. Every single MLB team must be represented by at least one player even if it means that another very worth deserving player gets left off the roster. The prior seasons’ World Series managers manage the games. It’s just this train wreck of stupid, and hasn’t been fun in quite some time.
Honestly, the only good thing about the All-Star Game this year is that it coincides with Comic-Con, so I’m not really going to miss any meaningful baseball in that stretch where I’ll be in San Diego.
But all that disdain aside, I have to say that every once in a blue moon, the people get it right. I’m not just happy that Freddie Freeman made the National League’s final All-Star roster spot, just because he’s a Brave, I’m not just happy that Freddie Freeman made the National League’s final All-Star roster spot because he was the right guy to make it, I’m most happy that Freddie Freeman made the National League’s final All-Star roster spot because he was the guy that the media didn’t want to make it.
Led by the talking heads at that biased compromised four lettered NFL Network outlet, the push and urging to the fans for the Los Angeles Dodgers’ rookie sensation Yasiel Puig to make the team was immeasurable. Short of simply saying Freddie Freeman was a piece of shit that killed puppies and accompanied Aaron Hernandez on his kill spree and hid evidence in the George Zimmerman trial and sparked violence in Egypt, countless media outlets lobbied, pushed and encouraged fans to go out and vote for Yasiel Puig over Freddie Freeman in the final spot voting.
When that didn’t seem to push things in Puig’s favor, most of these outlets when to smearing Freeman’s credibility to try and lobby to the analytical. Actual front page stories questioning the intelligence of fans began popping up to why they were voting for Freeman instead of Puig. Editorials, mostly based out of Los Angeles by not-so-hidden Dodger supporters began sprouting like fungus about how much greater Puig is than Freeman.
But when you push people so much for so long, eventually something’s going to give. When the final votes were tallied, Freddie Freeman beat out Yasiel Puig by somewhere around 4 million votes, with over 19 million votes. Steve Delabar, the American League final spot winner, didn’t even eclipse 10 million votes overall.
We live in a society where a lot of people simply don’t like being told what to do these days. I know this because I most definitely fall into such a category. In an ironic twist, it’s almost as if the entire popular mainstream sports media kind of shot themselves in the foot by essentially telling people to go out and vote for Puig, because it just made people want to vote for the guy they’re being to not vote for – Freddie Freeman. The Braves have a ton of fans throughout the country due to decades of nationally televised Braves games via TBS, but garnering 19 million votes in about a week definitely means that not only did Freeman get his share of votes from Braves fans, but from a lot of people who simply don’t like being told what to do.
Regardless, score one for the good guys. It’s pretty deplorable what the mainstream media was attempting to do, so fuck them for doing it. This wasn’t just an achievement for Freddie Freeman, it was a victory of the people over the corrupted ideals of the mainstream media.
Ironically, the way All-Star Games are played these days might make me want to tune in a little bit this year. Usually the voted starters are all out by the 3rd or 4th inning of the game, and managers begin utilizing all their bench players, who often times get more playing time than the starters do. That being said, there are two other first basemen on the roster to share time with, but there’s still a good chance that Freeman will get into the game as more than just a pinch hitter.
Not that it really matters, but it would sure look nice to see the All-Star Game end with Craig Kimbrel striking out the American League, with Freddie Freeman standing at first base.
