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AL is too deep and too strong.

How many innings do you guys think Rogers throws? 2, 3?

Ozzie joked that Rogers was going 10 innings in his presser yesterday.

This used to be the best All Star game in sports, but having guys like ManRam and Pedro duck their way out of playing like little bitches has made me care much, much less about it.

who cares, the game is probably better off with people who want to be there. Fuck those primadonnas.





alsoilovepedro

I just wish people would learn to stop voting for them, but we haven't done so well with elections in this country lately.

On the bright side, PNC Park will finally get the spotlight it deserves tonight, and we've got three Tigers on the squad.

Anybody want to look up when that happened last?

I just wish people would learn to stop voting for them, but we haven't done so well with elections in this country lately.

On the bright side, PNC Park will finally get the spotlight it deserves tonight, and we've got three Tigers on the squad.

Anybody want to look up when that happened last?

87, I think.

Manny's gotten a lot of flack but he actually does have a legit injury. He has a small tear in the "medial meniscus of his right knee". There's talk of him DHing more with Ortiz playing some first and Youkilis some left to try and keep him healthy.

(This information blatantly stolen from Will Carrol's BP Injury Weblog (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5284))

Didn't keep him from playing 19 innings the other night (in left field), and I'm convinced that everybody can come up with an injury to justify not playing if they want to.

Also, I'm just bitter and I hate the Red Sox.

I know that we're never going back to the time when it was an honor, not a nuisance to play in this game, but I can always dream.

I felt the same way when guys started begging off the Olympic basketball team, so at least I'm being consistent, lol.

Pedro is also legit injured, as usual. I'm going with the AL, the more talented and manly conference. I won't respect the NL until they stop having the pansy pitchers bat.

[QUOTE=Glenn]Didn't keep him from playing 19 innings the other night (in left field), and I'm convinced that everybody can come up with an injury to justify not playing if they want to.[QUOTE]

I'm sure he was expecting the game to go 19 innings.

If he was seriously injured (too injured to play in the AS game) he should have been DHing or not playing, IMO. I don't know how you can argue that he simply didn't want to play in the AS game, he does this every year.

If this game meant something to him, he'd be there. It's just an insult to the fans that voted for him, IMO.

Some people have suggested that if you pass on the AS game when elected, that you should miss the next 3-5 games after the break, mandatory. I think that's a little nuts, but I bet it would work. Of course, then you've got a bunch of disgruntled guys that don't want to be there taking spots of guys that do.

It's really a lose-lose.

It seems the players who miss the AS game are the players that know they'll be coming back. Maybe miss the next 5 AS games, whether you are voted in or not. Or would that be giving the players exactly what they want?

Harrold Reynolds said, he could have at least played one inning, taken one at bat, and handed off to the next player.

No offense Glenn, but do you complain about everything?

If Manny DH's, Ortiz fields, and fielding Ortiz is not something a competitive team would do. Ninteen innings is long, but you make it seem like a five mile marathon. It's one game, but against the defending champs. His bat was needed in the game.

Who cares about the All-Star game? It's crap. If the fans are that pissed they should either man up or stop watching baseball. The Red Sox are on TV fifty times a week, watch him there. Let the man rest up his injuries. He has a pennant to compete for, not worrying about pleasing some 15 year old geeks who voted for him on the internet.

No offense Glenn, but do you complain about everything?

Sorry Arch, sometimes I get carried away.

I think it's a legitimate gripe (players using the AS break as a vacation), but if the discussion is distracting, I'll drop it.

Kenny Rogers’s Playful Behavior May Be Sign of Maturity

Kenny Rogers and Ozzie Guillén sometimes acted like fourth graders during recess at a news conference Monday for the All-Star Game. Guillén whispered to Rogers, and Rogers giggled. Guillén showed Rogers a note, and he laughed again. They were not disruptive, but they were giddy.

For Guillén, the manager of the Chicago White Sox, the playful behavior was typical. For Rogers, a pitcher with the Detroit Tigers, it was not. But Rogers’s relaxed repartee with Guillén showed what a difference a year had made to a career that took a dreary turn when he accosted two camera operators last season while with the Texas Rangers.

From stone-faced to smiling, from pitching on a mediocre team to pitching on the best team in the major leagues, from being considered a pariah at the 2005 All-Star Game to starting for the American League in Tuesday night’s game at PNC Park. In 365 days between games, Rogers has veered 180 degrees.

“All those things in my life, every challenge that’s come my way, if I failed through it, I try to take advantage of anything I can learn from it and move on and make myself better,” Rogers said. “This is no exception.”

So, instead of a repeat of last year, when Rogers was surrounded by dozens of reporters and asked to explain his unexplainable actions, he was already old news. Rogers spoke to about 20 reporters, and half of the questions were about his crucial role in helping Detroit to a surprising 59-29 record and the lead in the American League Central.

When two reporters first approached Rogers after the news conference, he joked about his infamous incident with members of the news media by saying, “You’re not scared?”

Guillén, the A.L. manager, said he picked the left-handed Rogers because he was the best-rested starter, he was on a first-place team and he could pitch multiple innings. Guillén added that Rogers was “the best pitcher right now” in the league, but he was being kind. Rogers, who is 11-3 with a 3.85 earned run average, said that he was surprised to be chosen and that he was not one of the elite pitchers in the A.L.

“Kenny Rogers is my starting pitcher,” Guillén said. “And he will pitch 10 innings.”

The American Leaguers have the luxury of joking because they have silenced the N.L. in eight straight games, excluding a tie in 2002. Phil Garner, the manager of the Astros and the N.L. All-Stars, recalled how feisty players like Pete Rose used to set a tone for the N.L., which performed as if it were the last game of the World Series. But Garner, who will start Brad Penny of the Los Angeles Dodgers, said it was not that intense anymore.

“At this point now, I’d have to say the American League is taking it more seriously,” Garner said.

Rogers is taking it seriously, for several reasons. At 41 and in his 18th season, Rogers speculated that this could be his last appearance in an All-Star Game. Rogers also wants to counter the sour experience he had last year, when he allowed a homer to Atlanta’s Andruw Jones and was one of the only players booed at Detroit’s Comerica Park, where he is now admired.

But, most important, Rogers could also help the Tigers on Tuesday. Because the league that wins inherits the home-field advantage in the World Series, how Rogers does for a couple of innings in July could help decide if the Tigers potentially play host to an extra World Series game.

“Without a doubt, it has added importance,” Rogers said. “But, for me to bring in other distractions, I’m going to try not to do that.”

Even though Rogers was an All-Star for the third straight season, he said, “My stuff isn’t close to 99 percent of the guys here.”

But regardless of what Rogers accomplishes beyond his 201 career victories, a perfect game and a World Series ring with the Yankees, he will nearly always be stained by how he reacted June 29, 2005.

As Rogers walked from the dugout to the field before a home game at Ameriquest Field, unprovoked, he shoved two camera operators and nearly tossed a camera to the ground. Rogers’s actions were videotaped.

Commissioner Bud Selig called Rogers’s behavior “wholly unacceptable,” gave him a 20-game suspension (an arbitrator reduced it to 13) and fined him $50,000.

Rogers had been perturbed at the perception in the news media that he had purposely skipped a start.

“I am who I am,” Rogers said Monday. “I have limits, just like everyone, of what they can endure. Hopefully, I don’t reach those ever again.”

Rogers was a disappointment with the Yankees in 1996 and 1997 and never really adjusted to playing in New York. But when Alex Rodriguez, his former teammate in Texas, was asked about Rogers’s one-year makeover, he said, “I wish we had him.”

Then Rodriguez added: “Nobody cares about the image. What I care about is he’s been a dominant pitcher for the last three or four years.”

As Rogers kept talking to reporters Monday, there was some defiance in his voice. Yes, Rogers acknowledged, he did something wrong. But he said he had no regrets and did not feel that he must rebuild his reputation. Rogers is here to pitch in an All-Star Game, probably his last one, and that was what mattered to him now.

“I’m not perfect,” Rogers said. “I never have been. No matter what, it’s not like it’s going to be my last mistake.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/sports/baseball/11base.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Getting players to care about the All-Star game is easy. Just stop paying them millions. Rich people don't care about anything.

Great game.

I just hope this dosnt send Hoffman into a little rut. He's been good for me and my fantasy team this year.

That was a beautiful thing to only see two Tigers and a batter in camera-view as the All-Star game starters. A proud moment for Detroit.