ALL STAR GAME RECAP

I'm not the guy you want to be around if you're looking to see history. I'm the guy who watches an entire hockey game, but changes the channel for 25 seconds and misses the only goal of the game. I'm a Mets fan, so I've never seen a no-hitter that I really care about. I'm constantly aware that I may be watching something with historical significance, but it's the moment that I let my guard down that it happens.

Such was the case with the 2008 All Star Game, which was pretty magnificent (so I've heard). I loved the pre-game ceremonies, but I started feeling pretty sick by mid-game, so I turned in early. Justin from NYC wrote a great summary of the game at sportscracklepop.com. Here's the view of a guy who didn't make it past 11pm.

THE PRE-GAME CEREMONY: That was pretty cool. I saw some of the 1999 ceremony, at Fenway Park, but I was working then and didn't really enjoy it like I should have. This one I was able to appreciate. That was really, really great. I loved seeing Ralph Kiner out there, and guys like Bob Feller (when they showed him in the 1939 All Star Game at age 20 in the highlights earlier, I started questioning whether he was still alive - he looks good for 90!).

Justin pointed it out, too - but Willie Mays is a jerk. My dad was giving him the benefit of the doubt, thinking he was just 'out of it', but from all I've heard about Mays, he gave Josh Hamilton the cold shoulder. No wonder Barry Bonds is a mess - Willie Mays was his role model.

Speaking of 'out of it', I was wondering why Whitey Ford was not one of the guys throwing out a first pitch, then I thought back to the parade (which was horrible, but I watched anyway - Fox is such a joke...but that's a story for another day). When they asked him and Yogi Berra about the All Star Game Ford started at Yankee Stadium, he laughed and said he didn't remember - "How'd we do?", he asked. I thought he was kidding. Maybe he wasn't.

I thought conspicuous by his absence was Johnny Bench. Where was he? I can't really think of any other notable Hall of Famers that weren't there...but there probably were a few. And I know Paul Molitor finished his career mostly as a DH, but was that really fair to him to make him be the guy who represented designated hitters at the ceremony?

Finally, I was shocked by the George Steinbrenner appearance. He looked better than I expected...and it was much more touching than I expected as well.

THE GAME ITSELF: Billy Wagner still frightens the heck out of me. I didn't see him blow the save (truth be told, I didn't know until I saw a text from Justin this morning), but the fact that he only had to get one out and didn't in a big spot upsets me.

I only saw David Wright's first at-bat, in the eighth, where he struck out, but it's nice that he ended up getting four at-bats. And it's especially nice that he didn't play the field (he was DH), so he didn't have to beat himself up at all.

15 innings...I feel for the managers, who had to make some tough decisions. My newspaper didn't even have the final (it stopped at 13 innings in its game story), but The Wife forwarded me a quote from today's Boston Globe that said Clint Hurdle would have used David Wright as his pitcher had the game gone 16. I don't know if he was joking, or if he could only use Wright because he was the DH, but that probably would not have been a good thing for the Mets.

Finally, it was just a good All Star Game to watch (what I watched of it, anyway). It was truly the best of the best on display. I love baseball's All Star Game because of the uniforms - I love that the players wear their team's uniforms (just the home or away version, depending on the league), and I love the idea that on one night of the baseball season, all baseball fans are watching the same game. I think moreso than the post-season, where there might be bitterness, or there's competition from other sports, all eyes are on this one game. I think that's pretty cool.

MEET THE METS - DAVID WRIGHT

A preview of the 2008 Mets, presented in the expected batting order, followed by pitching rotation, followed by impact bullpen/bench players. Today we focus on third baseman David Wright.

2007: .325 avg, 30 HR, 107 RBI, 113 runs, 34 SB, .416 OBP

There's not much to say about David Wright. He's what the Mets have needed for a long time - a homegrown product who is equal parts role model, model citizen, and excellent ballplayer. His numbers speak for themselves - and when you consider he got off to a pretty slow start power-wise last season, and still finished with 30 homers, you get an idea of how well he's playing at this stage of his career. So instead of focusing on him in the 2008 season, because he's an automatic at this point, I'm going to look at David Wright in terms of his career, and one potential record that I think is in his grasp, as he enters his fourth full season in the majors.

If you read regularly, you probably know where I'm going with this...I stand by my argument that by the end of his career, David Wright will have made a run at the all-time doubles record. Tris Speaker holds the record, with 792. I'm going to look at Wright in comparison to Craig Biggio, who finished his career last year number 5 on the list, with 668. (I also plan sometime on writing an argument about whether or not Craig Biggio is a Hall of Famer.) That parenthetical note leads to this interesting bit - of the top 20 players on the all-time doubles list, 15 are Hall of Famers. And the ones who are not are Biggio, Pete Rose, Barry Bonds (when he hit doubles instead of homers), Rafael Palmeiro, and Luis Gonzalez.

David Wright has been consistent with his doubles in his career so far. He has 141 in three-and-a-half seasons. He hit 17 in 69 games his rookie year, then 42, 40, and 42. (The Mets team record is 44, held by Bernard Gilkey in 1996.) Counting 2004, that's an average of 35 a year. Speaker's numbers average out to about 37 doubles a year. For Biggio, it was an average of 33 a year over 20 seasons. So Wright is right on target.

And it's not like this is something that's going to go away as he gets older - you'd have to think he'll get more doubles as he gets older, not less, because some of the balls he hits that might have left the ballpark might become doubles off the wall instead of going over the wall. Not to mention the fact that he has a long way to go before he gets older.

For the record, Biggio's season-high for doubles was 56. Speaker's was 59. If Wright mixes one of those in, he'll spike his average a lot higher. The single-season record for doubles is 67, achieved by Earl Webb in 1931.

David Wright has good power, he steals bases, he improves every year as a defender - he helps the team in a number of ways. And he has the potential to be an all-time great. But there's really nothing on his resume that stands out in a record-setting way....except for the two-baggers.

So while you're following the Mets' successes this year as a team, and the great home run individual performances, I'll continue to watch David Wright's pursuit of the team doubles record, one hurdle on his way as he continues his assault on the all-time list.

CALLED TO THE HALL

I have lots of problems with lots of things. Trouble is, with some of these things, here's the way my mind works:
1) acknowledge problem
2) obsess over how troubling the problem is
3) move onto another problem to obsess over

Rarely does 2a) happen, but in this case it has. 2a) is this: Think of solution to problem, publish it on blog, and solve problem.

Here's what I've solved.

The problem is election into the baseball Hall of Fame. I have a big problem with the fact that a guy is not a Hall of Famer one year (maybe on his own merit, maybe in comparison to the people he's up for election with in a given year), and then in succeeding years, he gets closer and closer and closer to election, until one January day he gets the call and suddenly, he's a Hall of Famer! (Two things - I realize this system worked for Hall of Famer Gary Carter, but it's flawed to me, no matter which person I idolize benefits. Also, I realize that this is not the only problem with the system, but it's the only one I'm solving.)

Now, this is big news up by me these days because of Jim Rice, and how close he has gotten this year, and how likely it is that he will get in next year, after 15 years of eligibility (I think I have that right....I'm going sans looking up information here). (Also note that this is Jim Rice, pictured below. He's the Red Sox player about to be tagged out at home by Gary Carter in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series.).

What makes Rice a Hall of Famer now, after all these years, when he barely got 30% of the vote his first few times out? (Actually, with Rice, it's quite simple - the media are lording it over him that they control his Hall of Fame fate, because he was a downright jerk to them when he was playing. Since the media always gets the last laugh [you listening, Roger Clemens?], and he didn't stay on their good side, he's paying the price.)

My solution to this whole thing - wait more than 5 years on marginal candidates before you vote. Maybe give it ten years, and only leave them on the ballot for five years total. This way:

1) We're not subjected to year after year of voting, where a guy inches closer and closer and finally makes it.
2) A player, instead of campaigning and trying to win votes after his first year of eligibility and seeing how many more votes he needs, can spend 10 years building the case for candidacy before anyone votes at all.
3) A player like Jim Rice, who ticked off the writers, can have a longer cooling-off period (but, really, when it comes down to the media, they have long memories, and will hold the grudge no matter what).
4) With a player who is a lock for the Hall of Fame, the commissioner can step in and do something positive for the sport - waive the waiting period, or declare a 5-year waiting period, and that player can get in sooner.

I just thought I'd weigh in - it's rare that I can complain about something and offer some ideas to make it better. So I'm taking advantage of that opportunity.

AN E-MAIL: Thanks to Rob in New Jersey, who heard my desperate plea for e-mail and answered...in reference to my post last week about the Mangini cell phone ads:

"I was going to post a comment, but I didn't feel like taking the time to set up a log-in. Plus, I could tell you were jonesin' for an email to this address.

Re: Magini's Razr phone commercials... It also took me several viewing before I got the point.

Even though I agree with your take on the ads, allow me to pose an alternate theory: could it be that everyone in the city with a stake in Jets' outcomes or with things that cause angst is chucking his phone in frustration and they just end with Mangini showing his particular brand of frustration as a way of illustrating why the phones are turning up embedded in walls? In other words, could they be trying to make us think that Razrs are getting embedded in walls all over the place as people have things - Jets related or not - digust them? Hmmmm..."

If you want to meet someone who has obsessed over this longer and given it more thought than I, meet Rob. I think he's right - that's probably where all of the phones came from. It never seemed right that Mangini had about twenty phones and was chucking them into things all over Jersey. Thanks for making sense of that, Rob.

That said, I think we can all agree that if that is Belichick's voice at the end of the commercial (and the more I hear it now, the more I think it is), it's gotta be driving him nuts that he's tagging the end of a commercial starring Eric Mangini.