One Thing That Bugs Me

If there is one thing that bugs me about Major League Baseball, it is the All-Star Game. The fact that there is an All-Star Game is not what bugs me, but rather when voting starts for players to go the All-Star Game. I don't personally have a problem with fans voting for players they want to see in the game, but I do not like that fan voting begins about the third week of baseball season.

Is three weeks enough to determine if a player is deserving of an All-Star vote. I don't think so. I realize that voting is open until the end of June, but do we really need over two months of voting to figure out who the best players are.

I think a solution to this would be to have a week of voting towards the end of June. If Major League Baseball would do this, I believe that interest in voting and the All-Star Game would increase. Going with this method has several advantages to it.

First, it gives more time to see which players are deserving of an All-Star vote. The currents system makes the All-Star Game more of a long-term popularity contest. If the voting time was shortened and moved to a later time in the season, it would likely make voting much closer and realistic as to who gets to start in the game.

Secondly I think this approach would increase interest in the game itself. Currently the reason why the All-Star game is a "must-watch" is because home-field advantage in the World Series is determined by the winner (For the record, I do not like home-field advantage to be determined by an exhibition game. It should go to the team with the better record.). If the voting was condensed into a shorter amount of time, I think that people would be more interested in who is going to be playing and therefore more interested in watching the game.

I don't think that Major League Baseball will ever change to this type of system, because they really have no reason to change it. Regardless of how voting is done, there will still be plenty of good players in the game that make the game well worth watching, which I will still do.

New Yankee Stadium

Today was the Yankees home opener at their bran new field, Yankee Stadium. While it is the same name and from the pictures that I have seen looks very similar to the old Yankee Stadium, it is still in fact a new ballpark.

When I first heard of the Yankees building a new stadium, I was upset. In my opinion there were three baseball stadiums that should never be replaced - Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, and Yankee Stadium. All three of these ballparks are very historic and nee to have baseball played in them no matter how old they may be. The Cubs and the Red Sox have done the right thing with there stadiums, which is trying to keep the ballparks in running order and expanding seating capacity.

The Yankees, however, did what they should not have done, build a new stadium. Sure it is high-tech and top of the line, but there is no history in the stadium. What made the old Yankee Stadium special was knowing what happened there and who played there. Future generations can no longer say, I was in the stadium where Babe Ruth set records, or where Aaron Boone hit a walk-off home run in Game 7 of the League Championship Series, or where the Red Sox came from behind in a 7 game series to beat the Yankees before winning the World Series.

Might there be some great historic moments at the new stadium? Maybe, but I am upset as a basaball fan that I will never set foot in the "House that Ruth Built." So on this day that the Yankees open a new park, a good portion of me is happy that they are getting blown out.