They drive the best record in baseball, but only three Dodgers are 2009 All-Stars
There are three interpretations of the fact that the Los Angeles Dodgers (1) have the best record in the major leagues, but (2) only three players on their roster have been selected for the All-Star Game.
The first is that they simply don’t have any more staff to qualify for the midseason classic. Some teams will send one, so the Dodgers should be thrilled to have three times that award.
But this is a flaky justification. Arguably Juan Pierre should have qualified, in addition to Matt Kemp. They carried the team in the absence of slugger Manny Ramirez, which explains much of the blue crew’s success this year.
The second interpretation of having only three players going to the All-Start game is that the Dodgers have such a balanced offense, with their talent so widely distributed, that everyone is producing. They do not have or need more than three highlights to win. It’s a tribute, not a knockdown, that they have just three representatives for the July showdown with the American League.
The third way to understand potential misrepresentation is to look at Dodger fans who simply didn’t vote in the numbers that their fellow fans in other cities voted for. Heck, these people are famous for leaving games in the seventh inning stretch, to lose traffic on Interstate 5.
The Summer Classic is a good-news-bad-news deal at best. Yes, it’s a showcase of teams’ talent, which most fans never get to appreciate when rooting for an individual team. You get to see the best of each team, and many of these nameless exes are impressive, to say the least.
The not-so-happy part of the game is that he can injure his best collaborators in a contest that counts only to give the World Series representative home-field advantage. That’s an advantage, but it doesn’t measure up to the impact a pulled hamstring can have on your staff.
You long for an invitation to this party, but have to question the wisdom of actually attending.
Still, having three players on the roster is honorary, though we may wonder why there aren’t more.