Enough is Enough, Get Rid of Fan Voting

            With the mid-summer classic just days away the rosters have been released for the American League and National League all-star teams, the American League team once again littered with players from the Red Sox and Yankees, what a surprise.

            At this time of year baseball fans across the country get a chance to vote for their favorite players to hopefully earn a starting spot on their respective all-star teams. It’s also the time of year when wearing a Red Sox or Yankees hat sky rockets your popularity, numbers don’t really matter as long as you’re apart of the evil empire or America’s bandwagon you will get a paid vacation to hang out with baseball’s best, (term used very loosely).

            For example the Boston Red Sox (America’s bandwagon) have six representatives in the all-star game, four more players than division leading Tampa Bay who just made the Red Sox look like a little league team in a humiliating three-game sweep last week. No Tampa Bay players made it in on fan voting, while Jason Varitek was second in the voting among catchers. In addition to an all-star selection Varitek also owns the worst batting average among all catchers in the A.L. hitting .219, .99 behind Tampa Bay catcher Dioner Navarro and .106 behind all-star starting catcher Joe Mauer of the Minnesota Twins. Players like Varitek who are past their prime clearly do not belong in an all-star game, and if he played on any other team in the country (besides the Yankees) there is no way he gets voted into the all-star game.

            Another example of this is Dustin Pedroia of Boston who was voted the A.L. starter at second base. Now this is a little different being that Pedroia actually has produced this season, but he is not the best second basemen in the A.L. That title belongs to Ian Kinsler who is the A.L. leader in batting average, total hits, and runs scored. He is also third in doubles and fifth in stolen bases. Pedroia is distantly behind Kinsler in each category.

            The entire Boston outfield finished ahead of White Sox outfielder Jermaine Dye. While Dye still has a chance to be voted in as the final addition to the A.L. roster he still has hit more homeruns and has a better batting average than any outfielder on the Red Sox. Just to put these numbers in perspective Dye has a batting average of .308, Boston outfielder Coco Crisp has an average of .264, if Dye wore a Boston Red Sox jersey to work he would’ve been among the American League’s leading vote getters.

            This is not the first time this problem has been brought up. Look through past rosters of the all-star game especially for the A.L. and you can smell the B.S. no matter where you’re standing. I would normally support including the fans in something like this. But there are just too many fans that don’t know enough about baseball that it puts the players in small markets at an almost insurmountable disadvantage.

            The best thing that Major League Baseball can do would be to eliminate fan voting from the all-star game. I know it’s a tradition and I know it’s fun, but it’s just gotten out of hand. Fans don’t get to vote on the teams that go to the World Series, the two teams that deserve it most end up going. So let’s get fans out of the way of the players that deserve to go to the all-star game.

Terry Horstman