DownSwinging.com

Ahh, nothing like a little political activism in the world of sports. Yesterday evening Brandon Inge and Shane Victorino were named the 33rd and final player’s for their respective leagues in this year’s All-Star Game being held in St. Louis. Victorino and Inge were each part of a 5-candidate ballot to decide the final All-Stars, as determined purely by online voting at mlb.com. 68.6 million votes were cast in the couple days the “polls” were open, and to put that in perspective President Obama receied 63.25 million votes in the general election last November. Granted fans were allowed to vote more than once in the All-Star Game voting, but nonethless, I think we can all agree they got the vote out.

To me, I think the whole thing is hilarious, and great, for baseball. Suddenly this world of politics which is so deamonized and stereotyped as boring makes its way into America’s Pasttime, and everyone loves it. Shane Victorino took it like a political campaign, and actually went door-to-door with the mayor of Philadelphia reminding people to vote for the Flyin’ Hawaiian. It’s pretty nice to see how much players care. Easily the best part of the whole thing was the teaming up of two camps to create the “Bran-Torino” ballot. Firstly, it was clever, and second it was just smart. Even though I didn’t have any player that I was particularly passionate about helping out, I wanted to see Pablo Sandoval go to St. Louis. But every time I voted for him, I also voted for Brandon Inge, and at the time I thought, wow, the Inge people should get every Sandoval fan to vote for them, and vice-versa. Low and behold, someone did it, albeit with Victorino. Major kudos to whoever executed that plan.

Now, originally, I was going to finish this bit up with why Sandoval deserved the All-Star Game more than Victorino, but really, it’s a complete toss-up, I just happen to like one guy better. Yes, Sandoval has 13 HRs to Victorino’s 6, he’s got a higher batting average by 20 points, more RBIs. But then again, Victorino has speed, he’s got 15 thefts to Sandoval’s mere three, he also has a much better K/BB ratio, so while he has a lower average, their OBP is almost the same. Plus Victorino has been a key player for the Phillies both in this season and their World Series run. So while ESPN may have totally fixed the vote by putting Victorino on SportsCenter for a 10-minute spot, at the end of the day, the guy really deserves to be there.