The Chris Moeller Archives

The All-Star Game/Long live the King

I really enjoyed the All-Star game last night. I didn't arrive home until the 6th inning, but I still experienced plenty of high anxiety during my three hours in front of the tube. The longest Midsummer Classic in history-- 15 innings in duration-- had enough scoring threats, stranded runners, clutch plays, and boneheaded moments to fill four All-Star games. We're constantly reminded of what an exciting, dramatic sport baseball is. The action on the field rarely disappoints.

I did grow tired though of the uninterrupted bellyaching on the broadcast about the length of the game and the stress that was being placed on both the pitchers and the position players. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver should have been falling over each other describing all of the thrilling, sudden death action, and they're both great professionals, but instead we kept hearing about whether or not AL/Boston manager Terry Francona would be forced to use Tampa Bay pitcher Scott Kazmir in extra innings. What exactly is the big deal? Kazmir can't provide a couple innings in defense of his league because he showed up at Yankee Stadium on short rest? Both managers took their respective team into extra innings with three or four pitchers still available in the bullpen. What more do you-- or did you-- need in a 15 inning game? I say to them-- well done.

It should all be established in advance-- every pitcher selected for the game travels to the game under certain minimum and reasonable expectations-- two innings for starters, one inning for relievers. If you and/or your manager back home can't handle that level of contribution, there are plenty of other worthy pitchers around the circuit that would be willing to be named to the team. The Cardinals' Kyle Lohse stayed home despite being 11-2 with a 3.39 ERA at the break.

The American League ran out of position players during regulation, but the designated hitter rule was in place so there's really no reason the remaining players in the lineup couldn't all go at least nine innings, and many of them didn't even enter the game until the 8th or 9th. We'd have even more players available late if the starters weren't being pulled out of the game in the 3rd and 4th innings. Maybe that would also help the National League finally win their first game in the series since 1996. Did anyone expect the likes of Russell Martin, Ryan Ludwick, Dan Uggla, and Nate McLouth to come through in the late innings against the best closers the American League has to offer-- Mariano Rivera, Jonathan Papelbon, Joe Nathan, and Francisco Rodriguez? Where's Albert? What part of "this time it counts" am I not understanding?

As I've said before, I like the incentive of World Series home field advantage for the winning league of the All-Star game. During the 1990s, I got sick of looking at the game's starters dressed in street clothes by the time the 5th inning arrived. Baseball had a long tradition of league pride, and apparently this kind of policy is what's now required to restore the idea of ballplayers giving a damn-- at least until Pete Rose chooses to end his retirement. The popular complaint about the current policy is that a so-called "exhibition game" is being used to determine an important element of the postseason, but everyone seems to have forgotten that the previous determinant for home field advantage in the Fall Classic was alternating seasons. You can't be more indiscriminate to merit than that. Yet no one ever complained.

Next year, All-Star Game at Busch Stadium in St. Louis! They've got 12 months to try to get it right.

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Former Cardinals and current Cubs outfielder Jim Edmonds got married this afternoon at the St. Louis County Courthouse. He tied the knot with a St. Louis-area woman while clad in a t-shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes. Like Mark McGwire before him, the Southern California native would seem to prefer midwest farmers' daughters to California girls.

I hope they get to honeymoon in October. You hate to put that off too long.

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I don't know what more to tell you about this Anheuser Busch sale (...but one of you asked). The forced buyout-- and it is being forced-- is disheartening to say the least-- a sad end to perhaps the greatest American-owned and built company. Foreign board members will take over control of all aspects of the company. Divisions for packaging, entertainment, and theme parks-- 3 Sea Worlds and 2 Busch Gardens-- will likely be sold off. Employees whose positions aren't eliminated will go to work for a notoriously tight-fisted, anti-labor global conglomerate.

The InBev gang has a reputation for cost-slashing. Brewery executives likely won't be flying to work by helicopter any longer. Employees fear they may lose their individual allotment of two free cases of beer per month, to say nothing of their pensions. The company may not be long for the city of St. Louis at all, and plants could close in other parts of the U.S. as well.

Closer to home, this could mean for me and my compatriots an end to access and free public admission to Grant's Farm, a name change for both the Cardinals' ballpark and my own fantasy football team ("The Clydesdales").

I'll always be loyal to Budweiser though. Harry Caray was fired by Anheuser Busch and the Cardinals in 1969, but he continued to drink their signature beer and promote it for the rest of his life, because, he explained, it was simply the best tasting beer around.

Heaven knows the Busch clan didn't always behave perfectly throughout their five generations as King. They were guilty at times of being as crude, insulated, out-of-touch, and ignorant as any of the rest of the world's wealthiest 1%, but they're as much St. Louis as the Arch, and quite significantly the last prominent vestige of the 19th century German city. Busch patriarchs delivered to the White House, by horse wagon, the first legal beer after FDR ended Prohibition. The family name is on everything in St. Louis from colleges and hospitals to the ballpark to the animal cages at the zoo.

In one respect, it's akin to the mob surrendering Las Vegas to the corporatists in the late 1970s and '80s. There may be unprecendented development, growth, and profit yet to come, but it will never again be as fun.

posted by CM @ 8:36 PM