ASG ballot

[JohnU]

MLB released the All-Star ballot this week, which begs the question:

What's the rush?

The other thing is that folks are going to start voting, voting, voting ... for players they have heard of. Nothing wrong with that if the guy is actually able to play the game.

The ASG long ago stopped being interesting or important, save for who gets home field for the W.S., really another Selig up-yer-ass stupidity move.

What bugs me is that MLB refuses to change the ballot after it's been announced and the same crap happens every year. Ryan Howard got 1 million votes last year and didn't even play one single game. MLB could have fixed that in April and didn't. They look stupid, lazy and out of touch.

And letting people in Kyoto vote for the players is downright stupid.

Why even play this stupid game?

 

[Redsfan1507]

It's Bud Selig... Baseballs Antichrist. Not going to change until we stuff the write in ballot so Pete Rose, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Manny Ramirez, Roger Clemens, Palmeiro, Piazza & co. are all starters. How ya like them apples, Bud ?

 

[Ryanballa]

JohnU I agree. The voting system needs to be changed, Last year when Jose Altuve made it other then Brandon was the deal breaker.Anybody that knows baseball should know Brandon Phillips is the best 2nd baseman in the NL, Best defensive 2nd baseman in baseball, unbelievable.

 

[redsfan03]

I wasn't as upset about Altuve making it over Phillips as Uggla being the starter. The clown was voted in as the starting second baseman and he was barely hitting his weight! The voting inherently favors large market players and established players. Rarely does a completely deserving roster show up for an All Star game.

 

[Redsfan1507]

Starters are based on fan votes. Atlanta had more Uggla votes than Cincinnati had Phillips votes. It's no secret... if important to you, just like the election- vote early, vote often, cast a few votes for dead people, herd some crackheads toward a ballot. Hire ACORN.

 

[JohnU]

Well, yeah, but somebody in the SF Bay area managed to trick a robot into overloading the ballot box on the last day a year ago ... and half the Giants made the starting lineup.

 

[Redsfan1507]

Didn't the Reds do than in the 50's, and the commissioner stepped in to correct things... You know, like Selig fixed PED's ?

 

[JohnU]

The Reds ballot-box fiasco was in 1957 when the Cincy papers were given the right to print the ballot for some reason, evidently as part of some kind of link to tradition. I think Ford Frick was commissioner. I remember it, being old enough to "vote".

The ballot was in the papers (there were three Cincy rags in those days, Enquirer, Post and Times-Star) every day and right next to it, was the Reds lineup and the disclaimer that you ought to vote for a Reds guy if you weren't sure. The entire lineup was voted in for the game. Later, Frick ended up adding Musial, Mays, maybe, and somebody else ... it wasn't as big a controversy as it would be today, or at least as I recall. Anyway, the fans lost the vote after that for many years.

I still don't know for sure why the balloting was conducted that way. Maybe the commish was assured that it wouldn't go wrong. Yeah ... right.

The deal was, though, that you had to buy the newspaper to get a ballot, so the thinking was probably that there wouldn't be overload. Parts of that story escape me after all these years.