All Star Snubs Do Not Actually Exist

So the MLB All Star Game rosters were announced today, and we now go to one of the great annual traditions in sports and Blogfrica: puling about who didn't get to go.

You might think, after a lifetime of this, that we'd be over the Snub Story.

You might think that, after the ever-growing number of interleague games, Internet and sports channel coverage, that everyone in every market who wants to see a player, well, can.

You might think that, for heaven's sake, sports is not tabloid nonsense, and we really care more about the scoreboard than the hurt feelings.

You would be wrong.

Aaron Hill has hit for cycles! Zack Greinke's got numbers and a burning need to come back to the only well-attended game this century in Kansas City! Jake Peavy's got fWAR and a grudge against the new Yankee Stadium that needs national attention! James McDonald would give Pittsburgh its first 2-All Star appearance since the Barry Bonds Era! A.J. Pierzynski hasn't provoked a brawl in an exhibition game! Nothing says All-Star more than the well-traveled Josh Willingham!And so on, and so on, and so on.

Look, folks? The game is in Kansas City. In July. In the middle of one of the hottest summers on record, after weeks of games in inhuman conditions, at a time of ever-increasing airport irritation and so on, and so on. The ratings stink, the sense that this somehow matters because it determines World Series home-field advantage is pathetic, and the only real happiness involved is from getting named, rather than actually going.

So if you have a Snub Candidate, and you actually think he's bent out of shape to not go... you are wrong. And if you think that we're not going to see an absolute epidemic of hangnails, allergies, family emergencies and jury duty notices come out of the woodwork to cycle out six to twelve well-established names from the current list...

Well, I will have grievously underestimated the appeal of Kansas City in July. Or drawn all of the wrong lessons from the last couple of decades of not giving a flying frack at a rolling doughnut about this no account game. Let's all just move along, shall we?