It’s time once again for the annual midsummer tradition of old time columnists wringing their hands and lamenting the fact that the MLB All Star Game isn’t as big a deal as it used to be.  Bob Ryan wrote his yearly “It used to be one of the five biggest events on the sports calendar” piece.  So have a thousand others who are pissy that Bud Selig made the game actually mean something, thereby depriving it of its meaning somehow.  And you get the annual indignant columns along the lines of “Back in the day it was honor for players to be chosen, now every year you’ve got guys opting for the three days off instead.  What?  Is Dustin Pedroia an obstetrician now?  In my day, men were men, floobity floo…” I exaggerate, but only slightly.

I’ll grant them this point: The All Star Game isn’t what it used to be.  The players don’t take it as seriously as they used to.  It’s another one of those diminished American institutions that will never regain its importance.  My question is: Is that a bad thing?  Even a Grumpy Old Fan like me who can kind of remember the All Star Game’s former glory never really got why it was a big deal.  I mean, it’s entertaining, don’t get me wrong.  It’s fun to see lineups made up entirely of top tier players and to watch, say, Jason Bay get to hit against Tim Linecum.  But it’s nothing more than that, nor should it be.  It’s a novelty.  A diversion.  When I was a kid I read every Ted Williams book ever written.  And I was always embarrassed that he said hitting a walkoff homer at the ’41 game was the “biggest single thrill” of his career.  Really?  Winning an exhibition game was more fun than winning the pennant?  Or hitting .400?  It was ridiculous.  That mentality is the kind of thing Yankee fans used to hit Sox fans over the head with back when they were winning World Series and Sox players were winning All Star MVP awards.  Like the time Freddie Lynn, who was a Bronze Age JD Drew, missed the last two weeks before the break with some phantom injury, then started the All Star Game and hit a home run.  It wasn’t a “thrill,” it was cringe-inducing.  It was an outrage that he could’ve hit that same homer in a game that… I don’t know… actually counted.

Anyway, I think it was a good move to make move to make the game actually count for something, while I agree with the Bob Ryan’s of the world that the All Star will never have the importance it once did.  I just don’t understand why that’s a bad thing.