Dodgers’ Andre Ethier and Jonathan Broxton, Angels’ Torii Hunter chosen for All-Star game
Fox must not be running baseball after all. Stephen Strasburg did not make the All-Star team.
Not that the suits at Fox are wearing their sad faces. The All-Star game will look like most of the games shown on national television, with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox wherever you look.
The Yankees got six players onto the All-Star team. So did the Red Sox.
No other team got as many. The Angels, the host team, got one. The San Diego Padres, with the best record in the National League and the best pitching staff in the world, got one. They got their first baseman onto the team, but none of their pitchers.
East Coast bias? Are the Yankees and Red Sox players that much better, or are they just reaping the benefits of all that publicity?
“I think it’s more pub,” said Angels center fielder Torii Hunter, the club’s lone All-Star. “They get a lot of TV time.
“Those guys are good. Don’t get it twisted. It’s a really good division.”
Of the 35 American League players selected Sunday, more than half represent the AL East, the most televised division, and the division with perhaps the three best teams in the major leagues.
The Yankees and Red Sox account for one-third of the AL roster.
“It’s Red Sox Nation,” Hunter said. “It’s Yankee Empire. Yankee Universe? Whatever you call it. . . . You can’t beat those guys when it comes to voting.
“There are going to be three or four Yankees and Red Sox every year, no matter what kind of season they’re having.”
Said Angels pitcher Ervin Santana: “Everybody loves the Yankees and Boston.”
The players too. It is too easy to point the finger at the fans.
At third base, the fans voted for Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays. The players voted for Adrian Beltre of Boston. None of the six Red Sox players were elected by fans.
The fans do not vote for pitchers. The players vote for five starters, and they selected four from the AL East: Clay Buchholz and Jon Lester of Boston, Phil Hughes of the Yankees and David Price of Tampa Bay.
Whatever East Coast bias might exist in programming the regular season, Fox has no say in determining postseason results. And, when even the casual fan turns to baseball, the East is the beast. Come October, its stars are on the air, all the time.
Since the Angels won the World Series in 2002, either the Yankees or Red Sox have been the AL wild-card team in every year but one. The AL East has represented the league in the World Series five times in the last seven years.
The Yankees won last year, earning Manager Joe Girardi the right to manage the AL team. The manager makes the final few selections, in consultation with the league office.
Girardi was well aware the Yankees already had five All-Stars when he snubbed the Angels’ Jered Weaver in favor of his ace, CC Sabathia.
Weaver, the major league strikeout leader, has a better earned-run average than Sabathia. On the other hand, Girardi would not have ridden in a championship parade last fall if Sabathia had not put the Yankees atop his shoulders, pitching brilliantly and repeatedly on short rest.
“The good thing about being the manager of the All-Star game is you get a couple of picks,” Girardi told reporters in New York. “Obviously, you’re going to look at your guys first.”
Mike Scioscia played fair in 2003, his only year as the All-Star manager. Scioscia had one bullpen spot available and chose Kansas City Royals rookie Mike MacDougal over the Angels’ star closer, Troy Percival.
“MacDougal is doing something special in Kansas City,” Scioscia said then. “He’s deserving of the honor.”
We might not be done with the Yankees. Sabathia is scheduled to start next Sunday, so he would be ineligible to appear in the All-Star game. Girardi could replace him with Andy Pettitte. Weaver’s regular turn would also be next Sunday.
Pettitte would make it seven Yankees. And, as the Angels players expressed their disgust over Weaver’s omission, one looked up at the clubhouse television set. The MLB Network was on, and the announcers were goofing it up with Nick Swisher, one of the candidates for the final spot on the AL roster.
“There’s another one,” the player said.
That would be eight Yankees. One more, and they can take on the National League.
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