NL Secures World Series Home-Field Advantage By Winning Exhibition

It’s pretty cool to dislike the All-Star Game, even if you’re a baseball nerd. I don’t know the exact percentages, but I’d guess the breakdown of interest among baseball nerds goes something like this:

01 percent - Really, really interested.

31 percent - Kind of interested! I mean, sort of. Maybe.

49 percent - Wait, there’s no baseball tomorrow either? Okay, okay, I’ll watch for a couple of minutes.

19 percent - lol nope

Right about now is high time for pickin’-on-baseball season. All of the other sports are over. Most Americans have to choose between baseball and the Tour de France for their sports fix, and the other option has “France” right in the title of the event! They don’t even try to hide it. As such, you’ll get a lot of people checking in with a sport they don’t like, remembering why they don’t like it, and then making fun of it without mercy. It’s adorable.

This dovetails nicely with the release of the All-Star Game television ratings, which are good fodder for baseball-mocking. The ratings have been declining for decades.

So, what happened? Why did one of the game’s most consistent pitchers suddenly fall to pieces? As he explained after the game, he’s not used to exerting maximum effort from the opening pitch.

“That’s why I don’t try to throw 100 (mph) in the first inning, but this is for the fans,” he said. “It doesn’t usually work out too well for me.”

After the game, Cabrera talked about what it would mean if his team wound up on baseball’s biggest stage. He was being modest:

When asked about how he felt about his return to Kansas City, where he played his 2011 season, Cabrera said, “Again, I’m just very thankful for the fans that voted for me to come here.” Even after being traded following a good season, Cabrera’s main concern is to just play baseball wherever he is given the opportunity.

Cabrera was awarded with a sweet car for winning. Based on salary, Cabrera earns about $37,000 per team game played. Today’s athletes are so spoiled. We are the 99 percent!

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Officially, the 2012 All-Star Game lasted almost three hours.

Unofficially, it lasted 17 minutes.

So these Kansas City fans kind of like Billy Butler. And Tuesday, they got a chance to show it a little less mean-spiritedly. Butler drew, by far, the loudest pregame ovation when he was introduced. And when he stepped up to bat in the bottom of the seventh, you could’ve heard the roar from somewhere east of Kansas City to somewhere west of Kansas City.

Mets fans were understandably upset that R.A. Dickey didn’t get to start the All-Star Game. To make matters worse, he wasn’t going to get in the game in the third or fourth innings, either, because either a) Buster Posey is a delicate flower who shan’t catch knuckleballs, or b) a real American who knows that knuckleballs are a part of a Bolshevik plot.

But Dickey did get into the game, coming into the sixth inning. Now if there’s a list of players the baseball-loving world was excited to see, Dickey is at the top. But Mike Trout might be at the top, and when he came into the game, he showed why:

Watch this!

Yes, Mike Trout steals bases all the time. He’s funny like that. But Dickey, you might be surprised to learn, hardly ever gives up stolen bases.

Bryce Harper, all 19 years of him, made his debut as an All-Star in the top of the fifth inning, and walked. Buster Posey followed with a fly ball to left field.

Ho-hum.

Except Bryce Harper isn’t a ho-hum sort of baseball player. He hasn’t learned to ho-hum yet. So when Josh Hamilton squeezed Posey’s fly ball for an out, Harper lit out for second base, and he made it too.

The next batter hit a grounder to the the pitcher, and Harper got caught in a rundown. This doesn’t work in the major leagues as well as in high school, and Harper got tagged out.

In the bottom of the inning, Harper trotted out to left field. With David Ortiz on first base, Mike Napoli lifted a routine fly ball to routine left field. Harper trotted in for the catch, stopped still ... and probably heard the ball hit the ground, 10 feet behind him. He’d lost it completely in the lights.

A glove comparison:

The glove on the left side of the photo is a normal catcher’s glove, constructed in the normal way from the normal source. The glove on the right side of the photo consists of 98 percent of the skin of a mammoth scientifically bred and nurtured for the very purpose of being slaughtered upon adulthood and turned into a baseball glove to catch knuckleballs.

If you don’t know Neil deGrasse Tyson, this is as good a place to start as any. He’s a professional smart guy. How smart? Take the smartest person you know, then duct-tape him to the second-smartest guy you know. He’s even smarter.

And apparently, he’s watching the All-Star Game. He’s on fire:

There was a whole lot of action in the top of the first inning, and then a whole lot of nothing going on. After half of an inning it was 5-0 National League, and after three full innings it was 5-0 National League. Nine consecutive American League batters had been retired. National League batters had been retired too although I can’t care enough to look up how and in what order.

Matt Harrison pitched the fourth inning in an All-Star Game. Here’s this .gif of somebody for some reason.

I think we can all agree now that Justin Verlander is something of a mirage. Was never really that talented. His career All-Star Game ERA is now tied with Van Mungo. This is the second Van Mungo reference on Baseball Nation today, which is why you come here. And now that we know Justin Verlander isn’t that good, we can just move on.

But Joe Nathan is really talented, and it’s easy to forget that. Mariano Rivera (rightfully) gets all of the press, but Nathan’s been one of the best closers of his generation. When he got hurt, it seemed like people figured out he was done for. Maybe he’d have a decent comeback for a while, but the old Nathan was surely gone. He was pretty bad last year, remember.

I’m not sure what the fans would most like to see: a) the home-team American League winning the All-Star Game, or b) Robinson Canó looking bad.

Monday night, of course, the fans in Kansas City were all over Robinson Canó during the Home Run Derby, because Canó, as American League captain, chose Mark Trumbo instead of (among others) Billy Butler.

5-0 National League. The inning finally ended, but the NL batted around and the AL hasn’t even seen the batter’s box. Previously in Verlander’s All-Star Game experience, he allowed one run over two innings, which is completely meaningless.

In conclusion, Kansas City loves everybody except for Chris Perez and Robinson Cano. Oh, and they’ve never heard of Michael Bourn. Now here’s a GIF of the camera panning from tall guy to short guy to tall guy:

Just a quick ranking of tonight’s starting position players, ranked 1-18 (with Wins Above Replacement over the last calendar year my initial filter, but adjusting for Disabled List time) with National Leaguers all italicized and stuff.

Looks pretty even to me. What was striking, when looking at WAR over the last year, is how many of the best players -- by that particular measure, anyway -- aren’t even on the All-Star rosters at all, let alone starting the game. There really are a few guys at the top of the sport -- those top four or five guys, for example -- but once you get past them, there are dozens of great players who bounce around from season, in terms of statistics if not abilities.

Where earlier we provided for you the American League starting lineup for the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, now we provide for you the National League starting lineup, because it wouldn’t make sense to have one without the other. This NL lineup was built by the voters and arranged by Tony La Russa, who isn’t even a manager anymore! I mean, he still manages things on a daily basis, like when he gets up and what he eats, but he doesn’t manage baseball. I’m surprised he even remembers how to make a lineup, but maybe he had help. After all, where there are All-Star Game managers, there are All-Star Game bench and base coaches. I bet La Russa had one of them other guys make this.

Carlos Gonzalez, DH

Melky Cabrera, CF

Ryan Braun, LF

Joey Votto, 1B

Carlos Beltran, RF

Buster Posey, C

Pablo Sandoval, 3B

Dan Uggla, 2B

Rafael Furcal, SS

It’s the day before the 2012 MLB All-Star Game, meaning it’s the day we find out all about the respective leagues’ starting lineups. I don’t think I need to tell you that what follows is absolutely inconsequential, completely insignificant, and if you take issue with anything in here and try to argue about it you are doing it wrong. You are doing sports wrong. This is an All-Star Game. This is a starting lineup for an All-Star Game. This is as newsworthy as somebody’s status update that gosh it sure is great to see the family after so many weeks, what a wonderful Saturday on the back patio! Here is the American League starting lineup, as built by the voters and as arranged by Ron Washington.

Derek Jeter, SS

Robinson Cano, 2B

Josh Hamilton, LF

Jose Bautista, RF

Prince Fielder, 1B

Adrian Beltre, 3B

David Ortiz, DH

Mike Napoli, C

Curtis Granderson, CF