The All-Star Game Is Absurd

Interleague play has made the All-Star Game less interesting. The game itself is kind of unwatchable.

Welcome to my new subscribers. I know that many of you are primarily interested in my kibitzing on politics. Therefore, you may be surprised to find a baseball article in your inbox. I write a lot about politics on my Substack, but every now and then I write a baseball piece. Thinking about baseball helps me bring some balance to my life, so I hope you will indulge my periodic baseball musings.

One of the challenges of growing old as a baseball fan is not to fall into the inviting trap of being a baseball curmudgeon. This is particularly difficult because of the psychological trick baseball plays that leads us to think baseball was at its absolute best when we were somewhere around ages 8 through 14. For many baseball fans, it is somehow deep in our psyche that the players were never better, the game never more exciting, the rules never more perfect and the grass never greener than when we were that age.

I do my best to avoid the old baseball fan curmudgeon trap. I was an early adapter to advanced baseball analytics, and while some of those analytics have surpassed my quantitative skills, I still am intrigued by new ways to use data to better understand the game and evaluate players.