Top 12 takeaways from the All Star Game

12) Tony LaRussa kept R.A. Dickey out of the game long enough that most of America was asleep before he got in the game, but because this is baseball, that could have happened in the second inning

11) Someone might want to inform Royal Fan that Billy Butler really isn't worth all of this hubbub

10) If Justin Verlander doesn't have a chance to give six or more innings, he doesn't really care enough to pitch well

9) ESPN's chuckleheads mostly went for the American League in their predictions, which should have been our first clue that this would be a NL rout

8) That anguished sound you heard around the third inning was from the Fox execs who saw their meager audience melting away

7) The Nationals are going to deduct Stephen Strasburg's inning from his yearly allotment

6) Kansas City Fan is sure that the rout is all Robinson Cano's fault

5) Fox mic'ed up Matt Kemp, just so that we would get his pearls of wit over how guys who had just gotten a hit, can hit

4) Bryce Harper lost a ball in the lights, prompting roughly 7.5 million "That's a clown play, bro" jokes

3) The only reason this game was a blowout was because Chipper Jones willed it, the National League All Stars had such love for Tony LaRussa and Dave Duncan, and, um, random chance small sample size killjoy killjoy killjoy

2) Maybe it's OK that Giant Fan stuffed the ballot box

1) America is far too great of a nation to have a four-day period when the only game of note to watch is a three-hour-plus blowout that delivers unending dosage of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver