I don’t hear Albert Pujols complaining about the lack of Dominican national anthems being played at games like the All-Star Game. The fact that O Canada was even played at all is pretty surprising to me, a tribute I suppose to the fact that there is a team in Toronto. But it’s not like they play O Canada at the World Series if Toronto isn’t involved. Despite the Blue Jays, the MLB is an American organization, when the Jays aren’t playing there’s no need for the Anthem.

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.

Neither of them. It’s Justin Morneau of the Minnesota Twins. Morneau was always bound to lose out to these two because you knew both the Red Sox and Yankees fans were going to “get out the vote.” (For more on the all-star game voting problems, take a look here.) But in truth, the guy who plays for the often-overlooked midwestern team is actually the best candidate. He is tied in RBIs with Tex, and though he has a couple fewer home runs, his average is some 26 points higher than the Yankees’ first basemen, not to mention the fact that he has more total bases. And compared to Youkilis, he hasn’t got the OBP, but then again, he has played in 16 more games than him, which matters a lot when you consider how much more valuable Morneau’s batting average is in relation to Youk’s despite being essentially identical. No matter how you look at it, Morneau has 83 hits, Teixeira has 66, and Youkilis has 58.

It’s not like Morneau is really dying in the polls. He’s roughly 180,000 votes back, but that will be enough to keep him out of  the race. He’ll still get to make the trip to St. Louis, it’s just that he deserves to start.

Oh and by the way, if I had another pick for AL first basemen, it would be Victor Martinez, who leads the league in hits and has a better BA than any of the other guys. Lucky for Tex and Youk, he’s listed as a catcher.

There are two problems. Firstly, several years ago Bud Selig decided it was a great idea to change home field advantage in the World Series to the league that won the All-Star game, rather than just the previous alternating method. I have no idea what brought this ridiculous idea into his head, only about 10 percent of the players in the game will be in the Fall Classic. However, I do understand that the game is not exactly meant to be competitive, and this way it essentially leaves home-field advantage up to chance. I just would have preferred leaving it to actual chance, like a coin flip or something. Or just the old way. Whatever. But what I really have a problem with, is that when it comes time to measure a player’s career, maybe to consider them for Cooperstown, one of the many categories we look at is All-Star selections. How can these selections have any merit if I have to read articles like this? Fans stuff ballot boxes, teams with bigger fan bases vote more. Teams that are winning get people to vote more. The offensive starters in the All-Star game often are not the best people that could be out there, which creates a serious problem later on.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not happy with the way pitchers are selected, simply by the manager of the team that year. I like the fan involvement. I think there should be fan involvement. But what would be better would be waiting another week or two to put the ballots out, and having the ballots be smaller. Have the manager pick four or five guys from each position to put on the ballot. Right now every random guy that has started 15 games is on there. Jed Lowrie is on the ballot. Why? By making the ballots smaller it means that just playing in New York or Manny just being Manny doesn’t get you to the All-Star Game.