It’s hard to be objective about your favorite team. Things that might annoy or disgust you when other teams are responsible might be perfectly acceptable -- or at least overlook-able -- when it’s your own team.
Giants, Red Sox Team Up For All-Star Votes: Is This Wrong, Or Just Annoying?
The San Francisco Red Sox and Boston Red Sox are teaming up to ask for your All-Star votes. In what world was this a good idea?
So let’s compare notes. My first reactions to the All-Star voting alliance between the San Francisco Giants and the Boston Red Sox:
- Oh, gross.
- What the crap?
- This isn’t real, is it?
- I hope somebody gets fired over this.
Ah, but that was through the prism of a Giants fan’s mind. Here are my notes after I looked at the news and tried to be an impartial observer:
- Oh, gross.
- Seriously, what the crap?
- This isn’t real, is it?
- I hope somebody gets fired over this.
“I’ll vote for you if you vote for me” is a sentence that usually precedes “Will you trade your pudding cup for this banana?” in a conversation. To have two marketing departments agree on it is discouraging. Steak-sauce-flavored chewing gum would be a bad idea, but this is like A-1 coming up with the idea first, reaching out to Hubba Bubba, and making it happen.
All-Star voting is supposed to be fun and capricious, and it’s not like this is an affront to the game -- a bizarre alliance between two teams makes more sense than selecting home-field advantage in the World Series based on who wins the All-Star Game. This doesn’t destroy the sanctity of an exhibition. It’s just dippy.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that fan voting is a little annoying. Every year, it seems like one team has a player in the top three at every position. They’ll have a star or three leading the voting, and they’ll have five scrubs in the top half who are picking up votes by association.
Here's the worst part, though: Fan voting is probably the best way. There's a wisdom-of-crowds thing going on that beats what the players, coaches, or writers could come up with. Albert Pujols is leading the NL All-Star voting at first base. Good. He's a legend having a bad first half. I'd probably vote for Joey Votto, sure, but I'm not going to begrudge the fans their Pujols.
The All-Star Game isn’t that serious to begin with. But an artificial alliance between two unrelated teams is too clever by about half. Don’t spoil the idea of fan voting by getting greedy, teams. Promote your players, and step the heck out of the way.
Because, really, if I were to punch a little chad next to Kevin Youkilis's name, that's kind of like a vote for a stupid goatee. And I'm not sure if I'm ready for that kind of commitment yet.
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