Man, Does The National League Suck

For most of my lifetime of enjoying baseball, and basically that came in 1985 with the World Series where the Cardinals wuz robbed, and then the development of a favorite team came when I picked a regional allegiance with the Atlanta Braves, I have, in general, preferred the National League. But since the moment I became a baseball fan, I've seen the American League pretty much dominate the National League in the All-Star Game. The World Series has pretty much been back and forth, except for those Yankees days in the late nineties. But the All-Star Game? Forget it. How many has the NL won since 1986? Try 4 times. I don't remember this too well, but the NL somehow won 3 in a row from 1994-1996.

You could actually forget it when the lineup cards were made. So much power stacked on that AL side, as has always been the case during this run, which just so happened to coincide with my interest in baseball, after the NL had themselves gone on an unprecedented run of dominance where they won nearly all the time from 1950-1985, a 28-7-1 record. Yeah, there was a tie in 1961. Everyone must have been calling for Commissioner Frick's head that day.

But look, the NL had guys like David Eckstein starting. Good player, I'd like to have him on my team, but that isn't fair. Carlos Beltran got voted in by the fans and played 5 innings--he surely earned it after batting .266 with 9 HR (to the uneducated, that's underachieving, especially for a guy who makes $17 million). Somehow, Mike Piazza got voted in, too, and he started the game and played awhile. I wonder if Terry Francona and Joe Torre got together with some other AL managers and decided to "Rock the Vote." Hey, we'll secretly vote guys on the NL that seem like All-Stars but we know will be no problem come game time. Stuff the ballots! It was just a mismatch. It might as well have been guys with no arms and no legs, blind and deaf, wheelchairing to the plate carrying a pixie stick to bat.

And what could these pitchers do? Giving up 7 runs must have felt like some sort of moral victory. If there could have been a little more thunder out there, then that wouldn't have been difficult to match. I enjoyed seeing Andruw Jones hit his 2-run HR. That was majestic. He proved he should have been playing instead of Beltran.

And, even though I don't feel home-field advantage to mean much in the playoffs except for a select few series, the AL getting to start at their park, again, in the World Series is a tough mental obstacle. I've never been very hard on Bud Selig (I know quite a few just downright hate him), but making the All-Star game "mean something" to the World Series is completely illogical. I mean, we'll see it one day, I promise, if this is allowed to continue. Let's take a moment from real life. Hank Blalock hits that game-winning HR off Eric Gagne a couple of years ago. Let's say Blalock gets traded to the eventual NL champion, his HR having cost his own team the chance for home field advantage. Everything else relies on best records, why can't the Series?

Anyway, a terrible show the NL put on, again. They trot out Luis Castillo and Jimmy Rollins and the AL says, "Well, I've got Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz...ooh, Miguel Tejada...oh wait, here's Alex Rodriguez...I'll substitute Gary Sheffield at some point, maybe Ichiro Suzuki..." I'll tell you who the have-nots are...it's the whole damn National League.