It's A Small World After All

Major League Baseball trotted out it's "biggest stars" last night in the annual Home Run Derby. Oh, wait a minute, I think it's the Century 21, General Motors, Little Caesar's, Ameriquest Taco Bell, International House of Pancakes Home Run Derby. But I kid MLB just because they've done everything but sell uniform space to whore out for prime time tv.

More egregious to me was the bastardization of the game. They internationalized the competition to get representatives from eight different countries. And they had to stretch to get eight. Hee-Sop Choi from Korea? C'mon, give me a break. He's only got 38 home runs in his career and 13 this year. Ivan Rodriguez was a stretch as well. He's only got six home runs on the year because the Coma, uh, Comerica Park, is a crummy hitters park and Pudge is a doubles hitter not a home run hitter. You could tell it was a bit of a sensitive issue because when they were doing the introductions they didn't show that Pudge only had 6 dingers on the year, but that he had 256 in his career.

At least you're not Canadian. They had to deal with both the loss of the NHL as well as Jason Bay (the Canadian representative) getting shut out in the first round.

At least Bobby Abreu went nuts and hit 24 in the first round. And they were mashes too. Someone his homers were over 500 feet. At least someone was really hitting homers.

Does this format smack of tokenism? I mean you pick the Korean guy to be in the contest just because he's Korean not because he's really a home run hitter. People are being included or excluded because of their country of origin not because of their skill level. Too much thinking for me. I just wanted to eat a hot dog and see some batting practice taters.

I just feel bad for guys who have 20+ home runs and are legitimate sluggers who got shunned to put on this crappy international exhibition. Oh well, I'm sure the millions of dollars a year they get paid to play a kid's game will keep them from crying in their beer.