Keidel: Lay Off Baseball For Trying To Shake Things Up With All-Star Game
By Jason Keidel
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Baseball may have slid down the totem pole of team sports. But despite the NFL's chokehold over America's mind, time and wallet, baseball still owns the Big Apple -- which is saying a lot, considering NYC is still America's media vortex.
And it's long been agreed that of all the three major sports -- NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball -- the Midsummer Classic is the best of all the All-Star contests.
Basketball's All-Star Game is little more than an AAU slam-dunk contest. The NFL's Pro Bowl is so laughable they can't even agree on where or when to play it. (You see more proper tackling at a Pop Warner game.)
But baseball's All-Star Game is not only smack in the middle of the season, it's a game for more than provincial pride between two leagues.
MLB added a little juice to it by awarding the winning league home-field edge in the World Series. And millions of fans have been blasting baseball for it ever since.
Frankly, the sport can't win. It's long been criticized for being stuck in the muck of the old days, a retrograde sport that has forgotten the key demo while dwelling in the 1940s.
Then MLB comes to its senses and decides to apply a little PR Botox, pumping some life into an otherwise lifeless game. And now it's too radical?
A sport that too often is called out for glorifying the days when it was barely integrated, for living in the dim days before the Civil Rights Movement, is now considered out of its gourd for going for it.
Let's stop pretending that home-field advantage is what wins or loses a Fall Classic. The Royals won the Fall Classic in five games, clinching the title in Queens, not Kansas City, in a game they trailed in the ninth inning. So much for the epic edge of NYC crowds. The year before, the Giants won the World Series not in San Francisco, but in Kansas City
The Cavaliers won the NBA title in seven games, clinching not in Cleveland, but rather in Oakland. The Warriors won the title the year before, clinching in Cleveland, not Oakland.
The NFL entirely disregards home-field advantage, as the Super Bowl is played on a neutral field.
So the midsummer perk is exactly that -- a perk. It's hardly a sport-mutating event that makes or breaks dynasties.
You'd think the only major pro sport that has different dimensions in every ballpark would also be the one with the most pronounced home-field favorites. Yet you could argue that football, with the savage swings in weather conditions and drunken fans, sees the biggest boost for the home team, despite each gridiron being 120 yards long and 53 yards wide.
Likewise, basketball is 94 feet long, 50 feet wide, with rims set 10 feet above the hardwood. Yet the Warriors went 39-2 at home. Cleveland was a rather regular 24-17 on the road, but still squeezed out two wins at Golden State in the NBA Finals.
Baseball, however, with its quirky contours, shadows and winds, yields the softest diamond edge. The only distance that matters is the 60 feet, 6 inches between the mound and the catcher. That singular squabble between pitcher and batter is what dominates and determines the game.
Give baseball a break. This is a sport that has long lost its hold over the cool crowd, the millennials, who seem to set all the trends, who gave us Justin Bieber and the Kardashians.
Baseball is trying to be hip. Maybe it comes off as 80-year-old men in skinny jeans. But it's trying. Chris Rock recently noted that old-timers have literally played exhibitions on actual Southern Plantations. So, yeah, they've got some work to do.
If you're going to encourage the game for being proactive or progressive, then don't kill it for doing exactly that. Enjoy the All-Star Game. Maybe it's not perfect, but it's closer than any other sport.
The best team in every sport wins the title based on its talent and temerity, not on its location. Even baseball, too long stuck in yesterday, knows that today.
Follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonKeidel