BASEBALL / ROSS NEWHAN : All-Star Voters Must Be Watching Different Games

It is the same every year.

The doctor shakes his head and says, “Remember, don’t get upset over this All-Star thing. The voters know not what they do. It has no significance. It’s strictly a popularity contest and nothing to get agitated about. Watch your blood pressure.”

Sound advice, but every year it’s forgotten five minutes after the latest tabulations are released.

With this year’s game scheduled for July 9 in Toronto, the question is the same as always: Isn’t anyone paying attention to who’s playing and who’s not, who’s doing what and who’s not?

A popularity contest is one thing.

A parody is something else.

The evidence suggests that of the 16 players the fans are about to vote in as starters, only four are justified--if the criteria is 1991 performance, which is what an All-Star game is all about, or should be.

A rundown:

AMERICAN LEAGUE

First base--Fans like .206-hitting Mark McGwire, but the choice should be RBI leader Cecil Fielder, followed closely by Frank Thomas.

Second base--Roberto Alomar isn’t a bad pick by the fans, but Julio Franco’s offensive statistics are more convincing.

Shortstop--It’s impossible to argue with the fans’ choice of Cal Ripken.

Third base--The fans took the easy route, choosing Wade Boggs, but Edgar Martinez has been more consistent and deserving.

Catcher--This alone would bring blood to a boil. The fans’ choice is Sandy Alomar Jr., who has played fewer than 30 games because of injuries, batting .214. They could have chosen Terry Steinbach, Mickey Tettleton or Brian Harper and not had their logic questioned.

Outfield--The fans’ picks are Dave Henderson, Rickey Henderson and Ken Griffey Jr. Dave Henderson is fine, but Joe Carter and Ruben Sierra should be the other choices, with Dave Winfield an acceptable alternative. Even Harold Baines and Chili Davis, both designated hitters, might deserve consideration ahead of Griffey and Rickey Henderson.

NATIONAL LEAGUE

First base--Fred McGriff has made the greater impact, but it’s a statistical tossup between McGriff and Will Clark, the fan favorite, so no argument here.

Second base--The fans played the name game, automatically selecting Ryne Sandberg at the expense of Juan Samuel, who has had the better first half.

Shortstop--A tough choice between Barry Larkin, the better overall player, and Ozzie Smith, the fan favorite, but Smith had a strong enough first half to qualify as a legitimate selection.

Third base--Howard Johnson’s power and productivity get the call over fan leader Chris Sabo.

Outfield--The fans like Darryl Strawberry, Andre Dawson and Kevin Mitchell, which only proves that injury time--as accumulated by Strawberry and Mitchell--counts for something.

The choices here, eliminating David Justice, who went on the disabled list Thursday, are Tony Gwynn, Paul O’Neill and Ivan Calderon. George Bell would be next.

And showing heart, the doctor said he was voting for Brett Butler, who has never gone to an All-Star game and has earned the 1991 honor in ways that don’t show statistically.

WHO’S IN CHARGE

Jim Essian seemed to be running the Chicago Cubs after Don Zimmer was fired as manager, but a nine-game losing streak sent President Don Grenesko and General Manager Jim Frey flying to Pittsburgh for a closed-door meeting with Essian Wednesday.

One result: Frey apparently told Essian to end his three-man rotation in center field, where Jerome Walton will be the regular, and at third base, where Luis Salazar will get the full-time opportunity.

With Frey and Grenesko obviously stressing the need for stability--while contributing to instability with the firing of Zimmer followed by Friday’s firing of pitching coach Dick Pole in favor of Billy Connors--Essian emerged from the meeting to say that he will use a regular lineup and that Shawn Boskie, having won one of his last 11 starts, will be replaced in the rotation by the recently recalled Frank Castillo.

No amount of changes, in personnel or coaching, is likely to compensate for the loss of injured Rick Sutcliffe, Mike Harkey and Danny Jackson from that rotation.

Harkey is out for the season; Sutcliffe could be gone that long, and Jackson, whose latest injury is an abdominal strain, is on the disabled list for the second time as a Cub and the seventh time in the last 24 months. That’s a pattern the resident decision-makers, Frey and Grenesko, chose to ignore when they guaranteed him $10 million as a free agent before the season.

PERSPECTIVE

First, the Toronto Blue Jays failed to retain free agent Bud Black. Then, Dave Stieb was lost because of shoulder and back problems, and four pitchers went 4-9 in an attempt to replace him.

The Blue Jays, faced with a choice between the future and the present, opted for the latter, trading outfielders Mark Whiten and Glenallen Hill and pitcher Denis Boucher, all bona fide prospects, to the Cleveland Indians for pitcher Tom Candiotti, who is eligible for free agency when the season ends, and minor league outfielder Turner Ward.

It was a trade carrying potential risk and reward.

“I would have liked to keep one of the two,” third baseman Kelly Gruber said of Hill and Whiten, “but any time you’re in dire need of something, you have to pay a little more. With Stieb down, we were in dire need of another veteran pitcher (behind Jimmy Key, Todd Stottlemyre and David Wells).

“We needed that help now and down the road. I know it’s a cardinal sin to look ahead, but if we get to the playoffs, we’ll need that other pitcher. Of course, where would we be if we hadn’t lost Black. I didn’t understand that.”

The departure of Black, the injuries to Stieb and the problems in the fourth and fifth spots in the rotation haven’t prevented the Blue Jays from taking over first place in the American League East.

They will move Joe Carter, their MVP candidate, to right field and replace the highly regarded Whiten with a left-field platoon of Mookie Wilson and the highly regarded Derek Bell.

“We still don’t have a No. 5 starter because this guy is like a No. 2,” said a pleased Carter, praising Candiotti, his former Cleveland teammate.

The Indians, meanwhile, are looking strictly at the future. In the last two weeks, they have acquired a left fielder (Hill), a right fielder (Whiten), a first baseman (Reggie Jefferson) and a pitcher (Boucher).

Cleveland has last year’s rookie of the year at catcher in Alomar Jr., this year’s leading candidate at second base in Mark Lewis and a double-A third baseman, Jim Thome, who is already being touted as a 1992 candidate based on his .370 Eastern League average.

If all of that contributes to a brightening horizon, there is also this: The signing of a lease committing the Indians to the construction of a new stadium is said to be imminent, adding to the frustration in Washington, Tampa-St. Petersburg and Orlando, Fla.

There was hope in the losing expansion cities that the Indians would relocate.

PERSPECTIVE II

The race between the Blue Jays and the Boston Red Sox in the AL East was expected to go to the wire. It still might, but Toronto’s acquisition of Candiotti puts even more pressure on the Red Sox to get Roger Clemens on track.

No contender is more of a one-man team. The Red Sox were 14 games over .500 last season because Clemens was 15 over. On May 8 of this year, when he went 6-0, the Red Sox were also six over at 15-9.

Clemens is 3-5 since, a stretch in which the Red Sox are 21-23. He is only 5-4 in starts after losses this year, compared to 67-18 in previous years.

Scouts say two factors have eroded his overpowering effectiveness:

--He is throwing too many forkballs to appreciative hitters normally intimidated by his fastball, and has lost a degree of velocity by not using the fastball more.

--His control has been too good. Clemens has hit only one batter and walked 26 in 118 1/3 innings. Intimidation is a strength, but he is not brushing hitters back. He is letting them dig in and look for those forkballs.

“I don’t think there’s a big difference with my velocity or the way I’m throwing now compared to when I was 6-0,” Clemens said. “I just think I’m around the plate too much. Hitters look like they’re getting more comfortable. I have to adjust my game. I have to make sure I get them off the plate.”

WARHORSE

Marvin Miller, founder and former executive director of the Major League Players Assn., said in Los Angeles the other day that it would be feasible for the union to approve a salary system that provided players with a fixed percentage of the clubs’ revenue, but that the players would require a say in any management decision affecting revenue.

“Otherwise, to be brutally frank, the players would be at the mercy of whatever stupidity goes into the decisions establishing those revenues,” said Miller, 74, on a promotional tour for his book, “A Whole Different Ball Game.”

“People forget that the funding of the pension plan was initially based on the players receiving 60% of the radio-TV revenue from the All-Star game and the World Series.

“But no sooner did I arrive than Walter O’Malley (the late owner of the Dodgers) and others wanted that eliminated. The minute those revenues started to rise, they wanted to throw out the fixed percentage, so I’m highly skeptical of their intentions.”

Miller’s book is a biting, incisive history of the union’s rise and the major issues of the last 25 years. He is toughest on former commissioner Bowie Kuhn, writing that Kuhn’s “inept performance as a thinker and the owners’ designated fall guy . . . was one lucky break,” and that he was “indispensable to our success.”

Miller writes that Kuhn made friendly overtures that he never returned because Kuhn only wanted to pick his brains, and “There was scant possibility of reciprocation in that department.”