A game worth watching

The Major League Baseball All-Star game will be played in Atlanta next Tuesday and it’s the only professional All-Star game I still care about.

Before I get to the baseball game let me trash the others. The NBA all-star game, which I used to really enjoy, has turned into a joke. No one plays defense and they keep changing the format trying to make it interesting. I usually watch the Saturday night dunks, three-point shooting and skills competition, then look in on the Sunday night game for about 15 minutes before getting bored. And I LOVE the NBA, that’s how bad it is.

The football all-star game is even worse. For a while they held the game in Hawaii because no one wanted to play after going through a brutal season and it was an incentive for players to take their family on a nice vacation. However, if they did play they were very careful not to get hurt and that takes away from the spirit of football.

When that turned into a joke they turned it into a touch football game, and who wants to watch that? It’s time to do away with it entirely, and I LOVE the NFL.

I haven’t watched the NHL game in years, but it couldn’t be any worse than the other two.

And now, back to baseball. The game lends itself to all-star competition. It’s a team game played by individuals who don’t necessarily need teammates to shine. Oh sure, you need to have a smooth turning of a doubleplay and the pitcher and catcher have to know what pitch is coming, but for the most part it’s a game where you can excel on a team that stinks. Who remembers Ernie Banks? For the younger set, remember how good Mike Trout used to be on a lousy Angels team?

So, for the MLB all-star game isn’t it fun to see a gathering of the best players competing and actually trying to win the game? Unlike the NBA defense is a priority, and unlike the NFL there’s a minimum risk of serious injury. And, there used to be a lot of pride in your league.

I say “used to be” because the advent of interleague play has taken a lot of the edge off not only the World Series, but the All-Star game as well. Prior to 1997 the only time American Leaguers would play National League teams was in spring training, the World Series and the All-Star game. If you’re old like me you remember when there were debates over which league was better, and how exciting it was to see the two leagues clash on a Tuesday in July and the first week of October. That rivalry is gone now, but I’m okay with that because I like watching the two leagues mix during the season.

When I was a kid the All-Star game was a big deal. You’d have Bob Gibson pitching against Mickey Mantle or Whitey Ford trying to get Hank Aaron out. Both teams had a lot of pride in the their league, and if you remember Pete Rose bowling over Indians’ catcher Ray Fosse at the plate I guess there was a chance of injury, but it was important to win the game.

With a couple exceptions the baseball all-star game was played in the daytime until 1970, and since then it’s been a night game every season. In the early ’60s it was one of the few times you would have a game broadcast on television in color, and that was a big deal for a young Brian Hoffman. Growing up in southeast Pennsylvania I watched all the Phillies games I could, but they were always in black & white. And back then my family didn’t have a color TV anyway.

It’s hard for the younger folks to imagine, but when I was growing up having a color TV was pretty special. They were also pretty expensive compared to the black & white models and I know my dad got tired of me campaigning for a color set.

My aunt Alice and uncle Bob, on the other hand, were one of the few people I knew who had a color TV. They lived about three miles away and I would walk over to their house on the day of the all-star game to watch it in living color. It was better than Bonanza, which was the show people always cited for looking good in color.

It was exciting to see all the different stars in their brightly colored team uniforms lined up on the first and third base lines. That doesn’t seem like a big deal now, in the day of high def and 1,000 channels, but in the early ’60s that was a site to behold.

With that in mind, I hated the “uniform” uniforms the leagues have worn for the past four years. Instead of the respective team threads the teams wore specially designed ones made by Nike, and I thought that was a bad idea. I know the reason behind it was selling more jerseys, but when’s the last time you’ve seen anyone wearing one of those uniforms made just for the all-star game?

This year, thank goodness, the league got the memo. Players will once again be wearing their regular team uniforms for the game, and when they line up on the first and third base lines for pregame introductions it will once again look like an all-star game.

I’m looking forward to it. I traditionally root for the National League but if it comes down to the last pitch I’ll be happy either way.