Bits and pieces

So, there've been a few things I've been meaning to post about, but time and energy haven't been forthcoming for it. So a disjointed one today and hopefully back to real posts over the weekend(?).

• ITEM: The MLB All-Star Game was a dud for the 7th consecutive year. I don't know exactly what to suggest for de-dudifying the All-Star Game, other than doing away with the unconscionable home-run derby tiebreaker that marred last year's ASG (some of the best ASGs have been extra-inning affairs, which can never happen again so long as that stupid rule exists). But it would be in baseball's interest to tweak some things. As a friend of mine put it last night, in a way it's amazing anyone gets any hits at all in these games, since every pitcher is elite and they're only in the game very briefly. And this time around, the National League team barely had any, with Juan Soto notching a base hit in the 4th and nothing else until PCA got a hit in the 8th and Otto Lopez lined one in the 9th. One walk in the first, one in the seventh. Zippo otherwise in a year when the NL is far and away the superior league in terms of team strength (of course, the ASG is all about individuals, where there's more parity). Meanwhile, the American League team plated three in the first inning and that was effectively it for the game, after that just a solo homer from Miguel Vargas in the 8th that went by in a blink. We were wondering if this game would set a record for most strikeouts, but no; that happened a few years back in another dud.

  Other than changing the selection process to better choose the participants, I don't know how to fix this, or even if it needs to be fixed, but there are a couple of things I'd like to see beyond obliterating the HR Derby tiebreaker. One, mandate that the starting pitcher pitch at least two innings unless he gets hurt or unless he gets lit up. Then it's actually a bigger deal to be named starter than to just be an opener in a bullpen game. Two, no more mid-game interruptions—in Bud Selig's day we'd get mid-game delays to make a speech or something, these days it's a delay for some sort of stunt or performance like it's a miniature football halftime show. This year it was a video of a bunch of kids riding their bikes to a ballgame followed by real kids riding bikes onto the field, I think as some sort of homage to the film The Sandlot. Also midgame fireworks that flooded the ballpark with particulates and haze. Do that shit before the game or don't do it at all.

  Maybe the biggest problem, though, isn't the game itself but the broadcast of the game. It's hard to follow the game as it's being presented to us. Fox Sports has taken to interviewing players—including, this time, both the pitcher and catcher at the same time—while they are actively playing the game, which, OK, can be entertaining in spots but generally is pointless and has to be distracting for the players, in addition to being a sideshow from the game itself. The commentators have interviewed players after they come out of the game forever, that's fine (so long as we can still see what's happening on the field) and less intrusive. But I'd do away with players taking earpieces with them out to the field to chat with Joe Davis and John Smoltz, or whomever takes over play-by-play duty in the future. Not unrelatedly, the Fox crew doesn't reliably let us know when players come into the game, and there are a ton of substitutions going on after the third inning of an ASG (elected starters have to play three frames); many fans are wanting to see "their guy" play, and sometimes we don't know until a ball is hit to his position and we see the guy make a play. "Hey, my guy is in! Wonder how long he's been out there. Could've been two or three innings for all we know." The broadcasters are too into doing their goofy/inane Q&A with players as they're trying to play to really pay attention to much else. We also should get more in the way of graphics and info on the All-Star players; you get some with the starters as the lineups are announced, but a lot of these guys are unfamiliar to the audience outside of their home markets, it'd be nice for the casual fan to see why, say, rookie Tristian Peters made the squad instead of just wondering amongst themselves as we did, "hey who's that White Sox guy, what's his deal?" Do a little graphical info dump when new players enter the game. And John Smoltz is his own category of problem, he's just terrible as a commentator whether it's the ASG or a playoff game or anything else.

  We enjoyed mocking the thing here, though.

• ITEM (related): Another quote from Craig. From the "this date in baseball history" section of Craig Calcaterra's newsletter today: "1909 — Ed Summers of the Detroit Tigers allows only seven hits and pitches all 18 innings of a 0-0 tie—the game was called due to darkness—with the Washington Senators. It's the longest scoreless game in AL history. Yet, somehow, it was still far more compelling than the 2026 All-Star Game."
• ITEM: People are dumb, and people with fireworks are super dumb. My umpiring shifts for Capitol Hill games have been/are being moved elsewhere because some idiot set off fireworks on the Cap Hill field's synthetic infield and damaged it to the point of unplayability. That whole set of athletic fields is in need of resurfacing, yes, but until a week-and-a-half ago it was still plenty usable. This happened to a lesser extent last year at the Ballard fields where the Spuds play and we had to navigate our play around a hole between first and second base. Can we just be done with fireworks? They're pretty, but the particulates, the smoke, the noise, the fire hazard, is it really worth it? Drone shows are less damaging.
• ITEM: Spuds done for ’26: Speaking of the Spuddies, we played our playoff game yesterday and it did not go well. Full post on that coming later on, but we were trounced.
• ITEM: The health care system in this country is a joke, part 2,352,091. I had my annual checkup today, and I had to go to a new doctor for it. My prior doc doesn't take the insurance I have now, which I switched to because Republicans made the premiums on the insurance I had the last couple of years unaffordable. So I had to go through the rigamarole of again finding a new primary care doc, which I did a couple months ago and today was the next available appointment I could comfortably swing. So I find my way to the new place, go to check in, and am told this doctor isn't taking new patients, but we can do my annual check. "Wait, what?" This didn't compute with me. "If she isn't taking new patients, why am I here? Why did this appointment even get accepted in the first place?" The reply was gobbledygook that made no sense to me, but I was already there and my Rx is going to run out in a couple weeks, so I said fine, we'll do this and then I'll go through the whole process yet again next time I need to see someone. The nurse/med tech guy was sympathetic when he was getting my vitals and such, and after he left the exam room I heard him explain to the doctor in detail about the scheduling fuckup, and in the end the doc agreed to take me on anyway. It may or may not work out well, I don't really have a sense of her as someone I can relate to. The prior doctor was a good fit, I wish I could've kept seeing her, but we live in the US of A, where everything medical is dictated by what insurance you can afford, because people are stupid and keep electing Republicans.
• ITEM: Felon47 went on TV with his tin-foil hat. The alleged President of the United States, a convicted felon and perpetrator of several frauds that were settled out of court as well as many that have yet to be charged, the most grandiose and prolific liar on Earth, made a "speech" about made-up election conspiracies tonight. He distorted intelligence that we already knew about to make it sound (to him, anyway) like there were rampant issues with foreign operatives that are not the actual issues with foreign operatives which benefit him, he made already-debunked claims of mass-voting by non-citizens. He whined and grievanced his way through a pathetic spectacle intended to do two things: Create support for his pet voter-suppression bill that as it stands has no chance of passing either house of Congress, because he wants to be able to cheat in elections with impunity; and take the news media's focus off of the Iran debacle, gas prices, oncoming economic calamity, the outrageous things said by his unqualified criminal lackey nominees in confirmation hearings going on this week, his Air Force One fuckups, the reflecting pool bullshit, ICE murdering people and getting away with it, RFK Jr.'s direct responsibility for both screwworm and parasites in our lettuce (and the need for me to have gotten a measles vaccination today), deaths in DHS custody, the embarrassing NATO summit, his petulant refusal to sign a bipartisan housing bill that became law anyway (which he may not know), his staff getting caught using inside info to make Kalshi bets, his flip-flopping Strait of Hormuz "policies", a judge slapping him down hard on his "settlement" with the IRS, the Republican push for an unconscionable increase in military funding, his and Pete Hegseth's various war crimes, his illegal harassment of journalists, and the evergreen scandal of the Epstein Files. We can't wait for this maniac's term to run out, we need to elect as may Democrats to Congress as possible, by margins too big for him to cheat against, and remove him ASAP.