Maybe it won’t be a Cubs omen

Baseball’s All-Star game tonight -- which includes several players from the first-place Chicago Cubs on the National League roster -- brought to mind that the midsummer classic wasn’t around when the Cubs last won the World Series in 1908.

The All-Star game debuted in 1933. And Steve Vanderpool of the website Stats.com reminds us that there also was no All-Star game when the Cubs last played in the World Series in 1945.

Team owners voted to cancel the game scheduled for Fenway Park that year because of World War II travel restrictions.

Major League Baseball also did not name a formal list of All-Stars for that season. Associated Press sportswriters created their own list of top players -- including four Cubs -- but it was not considered official.

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Trivia time

When the All-Star game resumed in postwar 1946, where was it first played and what notable event happened?

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Tough love

The All-Star game also means taking stock of the first half of the season, including the fact that the Seattle Mariners are one of the worst teams in the major leagues.

Seattle has a 37-58 record, leaving them 20 games behind the Angels in the American League West.

Moira Koskey needs no reminder. She writes a blog called “Mariner Housewife” for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s website and, in her latest entry, said “the lead-up to the All-Star break has been really depressing this season.”

“I’m usually excited to read all the trade rumors and speculation, because usually, to some extent, Seattle is in the mix,” she wrote. “This year, all we can do is hope to get some decent prospects from somewhere. My level of faith in the management has fallen to record lows, and I’m pretty certain I’m not the only one.”

Koskey’s blog comes with legal boilerplate from the newspaper cautioning that it’s not responsible for her opinions. But she seems to speak with some authority: She grew up a Cubs fan.

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Hitting the brakes

The much-ballyhooed prospect that Barack Obama might sponsor a NASCAR Sprint Cup car at a race next month was quickly rejected not only by the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee but also by the car’s owner.

Beth Ann Morgenthau, whose monogrammed BAM Racing owns the No. 49 Toyota, said the team -- which has been struggling to find sponsors -- agreed to explore the possibility of a candidate sponsoring the car but that the talks were only tentative.

In the end, she said, the team “decided to heed the advice of the overwhelming response by fans to keep politics out of racing.”

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Protest pack

A Tibetan independence activist group in Australia is offering athletes “rights” packs for the Summer Olympics in Beijing but cautioned that they could upset Chinese authorities.

The pack includes a T-shirt with the words “I support human rights” in English and Mandarin -- designed to avoid breaking Chinese rules against making explicit reference to Tibet -- along with badges, stickers and temporary tattoos.

But Simon Bradshaw, campaign coordinator for the Australia Tibet Council, acknowledged to Reuters that athletes using the items to make public statements about Tibet could “face consequences.”

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Trivia answer

Fenway Park, which had been scheduled to play host to the 1945 game. During the game, Boston’s Ted Williams hit one of Rip Sewell’s loopy “eephus” pitches over the fence as part of a 12-0 American League rout.

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And finally

Here’s the tally from this year’s running of the bulls through the streets in Pamplona, Spain, as provided by the website News.com.au in Australia: The total number injured was 45, and the number gored by a bull was four -- including a Bakersfield man -- down from 14 last year.

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james.peltz@latimes.com