I Now Realize the Fun of All-Star Games

So, each year, I usually check out the baseball all-star game. It can usually be pretty entertaining, seeing the best players in baseball play each other, but to me, and I think a lot of people, its not that big of a deal. Even now that "this game counts" and the home league in the World Series is determined from it, it's still not that big of a deal to the average fan, whose team it may or may not matter to (who really knows in July?). It's actually kind of funny, because all it really is is a passing thought after the game. As a White Sox fan, I benefited from the AL's win in the 2005 all-star game, and I remember thinking after the game, "hey, the AL won, and the Sox are doing pretty good this year. If they make it to the World Series, they'll get home field." That was pretty much it, and it worked out well that game 1 was in Chicago on a Saturday night so I got to go.

But I think it was tonight where I realized the true value of an all-star game, beyond any lame gimmick to let the AL have home field every single year in the World Series: They are absolutely awesome to record and then rebroadcast on the MLB Network about 20 years later. Yes, that's right. They serve as a perfect time capsule of the players of the day to show the stars of the era and to remind grown-ups who were kids at the time of the players they grew up with.

My theory has always been that the most impressionable 5 year window for a kid becoming a sports fan is between 6 and 11 years old. As a 6 year old, they are just starting to understand a little more about the teams and individual players, and they usually create their oldest sports memories. By 11, any good future sports fan should be really knowledgeable about the teams and players and have a little bit of history and trends to fall back on after 5 years of solid fandom, supplemented by baseball cards, board games, or video games, depending on the era they grew up (and not having a job or caring about having a girlfriend allows more free time to be dedicated to sports).

Based on this, my impressionable sports window was from 1989-1994. Leaving the conversation on baseball, some of my baseball memories from that period include the 1989 World Series earthquake, the baseball strike, learning to love guys like Carlton Fisk, Frank Thomas, Robin Ventura, and Jack McDowell, learning to hate guys like Jose Canseco, Tony LaRussa, Ryne Sandberg, and Mark Grace, learning to respect guys like Ken Griffey Jr. and Cal Ripken, the destruction of the old Comiskey Park and the opening of the new Comiskey Park, loving every minute of watching the A's get swept in the 1990 World Series (I really hated them back then), seeing the White Sox win a division title and Frank Thomas winning 2 MVPs, and the list goes on and on. Just about every baseball card I own is from this time period and I got even more familiar with players by playing the All-Star Baseball spinner game and playing the primitive Nintendo and Super Nintendo games that actually had MLB teams and players.

So tonight the MLB Network decided to show the 1990 and 1991 All-Star games back to back, which I caught flipping through the channels, and I just couldn't stop watching. Originally, I thought it was funny to see so many members of the Danny Tartabull game playing in these games, which I just posted in the archives, including Danny Tartabull himself, but watching these games really took me back to my days as a 7 and 8 year old watching players that seemed larger than life at the time playing each other, and it was a lot of fun. It really took me back, remembering my baseball cards and silly kid arguments about who is better with my friends. It's also funny to watch games from this era for the awkward moments baseball would probably want us to forget. For example, in the 1990 game, Jose Canseco flew out to Darryl Strawberry, and Strawberry threw out the tagging up runner at home. Heading back into the dugout, he was congratulated by Barry Bonds.....ugh...

So I officially discovered the best part about an all-star game. They are awesome to record and show several years later. I bet there are a lot of 6-11 years out there right now that will sit down and have a ton of fun watching the 2009 all-star game some time in 2028.