All Sports // MLB: All Star Game

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“SPORTS NOTEBOOK” posts its columns Tuesday and Friday of every week---Ed. & Publ., Marvin Leibstone.

ALL SPORTS:   WITHIN U.S. and world sports, the year 2012 is already marked by those unexpected curves and twists that occur in the midsummer night dreams of Gods, heroes and anti-heroes. For instance, artful boxer Manny Pacquiao was unexpectedly beaten by a lesser competitor. Add, the strange happenings in tennis, such as Spain’s Rafael Nadal and Russian born/U.S. resident Maria Sharapova being put away early during the year’s Wimbledon tourney, and Serena Williams overcoming physical difficulties, pushing ahead to win Wimbledon for the fifth time.

            Also at Wimbledon, Serbia’s Novak Djokovic lost in the semi-finals and the United Kingdom’s Andy Murray made it to the finals and put up a fine showing while losing to Roger Federer’s 17^th Grand Slam victory and seventh Wimbledon win (the 30 year-old Swiss tied the Wimbledon win record held by U.S. tennis great, Pete Sampras).

And, Major League baseball has been just as strange, with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Washington Nationals among professional baseball’s leading teams when expected to be otherwise. How could award winning hurlers Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants and Cliff Lee of the Philadelphia Phillies be doing so poorly, and Texas Rangers hitter, Josh Hamilton, start the season so well, falling flat so quickly? Then there’s the expected to be marginal R.A. Dickey of the New York Mets becoming a knuckleball maestro, holding a 2.3 ERA and averaging 9.1 strikeouts per nine innings of play.

Also, there’s Miami Marlins slugger, Giancarlo Stanton, rising suddenly to be the game’s hope that home run kings will reign over the best pitchers for at least a decade (he’s well over .300 now---in May alone, he belted 12 homers and provided 30 RBI’s).

And, no ball club this year has been more stunningly and unexpectedly disappointing than the Colorado Rockies, as of yesterday holding the poorest record in both the American and National Leagues, only 33 wins against 52 losses, team average .388, the possibility of a .500 season finish a dreamer’s long stretch away.

Colorado’s problems are many, including a weak starting rotation, a bull pen that would have to be “the Avengers” in order to undo early inning damage, and a line-up of hitters running hot and cold, when hot just as admirable as the better hitters of most ball clubs. Unfortunately, Colorado’s inconsistency of power for extra-base hits and home runs hasn’t been enough to undo the rotation’s vulnerabilities.

With regard to professional basketball, the negative surprise has been the Miami Heat’s Dywane Wade and Chris Bosh, and the Los Angeles Clippers Chauncey Billups, suddenly no-go’s for the U.S. team at the London Olympics. Another NBA surprise has been Steve Nash traded from the Phoenix Suns to the L.A. Lakers, and Jason Kidd from the Dallas Mavericks to the New York Knicks.  

So---what all this demonstrates is that sports is always a verb, it’s action 24/7, a dynamic formed from a constant stream of multiple changes. Maybe constant change is at the core of professional sports, contributing to why all sports are speculative, not easy to predict.

Of course, some changes become positive transformations, evolving into betterment for the sport in question, while other changes barely alter the status quo. Changes can also deny progress, causing a sport to regress and lose respect, e.g., baseball during the steroid scandals, and college football marred by the Sandusky affair.

In tennis, Roger Federer’s quick return to being best among the best in tennis could be telling us that a paradigm change signaled by Nadal and Djokovic being the reigning champions among champions is not meant to be, and perhaps the likes of Stanton and a hitter like Carlos Gonzalez of the Colorado Rockies are evidence that super sluggers will still be lighting up baseball, that the game hasn’t been purchased by hammering and hard-edge pitching rotations.

And, what's the overall message from the current condition of the Rockies? In general terms, it’s that baseball, like all sports, is always what happens in spite of what’s planned, yet the best plans avoid the most damage.

MLB & the All Star Game.    

Except for 1945 (it was WW-2), there’s been a MLB All Star game every year since the early 1930’s, the American League winning 38 times, the National League 41, in 2002 a tie after 11 innings. Sort of close, but since year 2000 the AL has won the All Star game nine times, the NL three times, hardly close. However, the NL won the event in 2010 and 2011, cumulatively eight runs over the AL’s two.

And, there’s no proof that the NL cannot win again this year.

Yet even if the NL does win the All Star game, it will still be hard pressed to convince anyone that it is indeed the better league. Here’s why: the AL is the only league with teams averaging above .600, the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers. Moreover, the teams leading the AL’s three divisions are averaging .612, .600 and .553, with a total number of winning games exceeding 150, while the NL’s three division leading clubs have averages of .590, .565 and .540, with a total number of wins below 145.

Too, the AL’s worst three teams have 51, 48 and 43 wins respectively, the NL’s three bottom teams having 37, 33 and 33 wins respectively.

Yet the best way to enjoy MLB's All Star game is to set aside the numbers and watch baseball's best athletes do their thing.

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