Spring Training workouts start for the Baltimore Orioles’ pitchers and catchers in just over two weeks. That means that Super Bowl Sunday is next weekend. And…the NFL’s Pro Bowl is today. Whoop-dee-flippin’-doo.
It’s by far the worst of all of the sports’ all-star games. I log all of ten minutes with it every year. However for better or for worse, the NFL has, in fact, re-done the way it’s being done over the years. It used to be the weekend AFTER the Super Bowl, and always in Hawaii. Now it’s the weekend before the Super Bowl, and the location varies.
Today’s game is in Orlando, FL, and it’ll have a distinctly Baltimore flavor. Ravens head coach John Harbaugh and his staff will be coaching the AFC team. For what that’s worth.
With that said, should MLB consider taking a page out of the NFL’s book and consider re-tooling the All-Star Game? I’m not even sure what could be done, as the venue itself rotates around already. (This year’s game will be at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.) But would more people pay attention to what’s in essence an exhibition?
My answer is that there are two very minor things they could change. The first would be doing what the NBA and NHL do and play the game over a weekend. Now the schedule’s set up so that the game’s on a Tuesday and the season resumes on Friday, but they could remedy that also. Ratings might be better for a Saturday night game.
The other thing would be to move the game back closer to the midpoint of the season. It’s unclear to me as to why the league moved the ASG to the middle of July, which is well into the statistical second half of the year. Granted every team’s different in terms of when their games fall, but ideally they’d have the ASG when most teams had played between 80-84 games.
But other than that, speaking for myself I can’t think of anything else that could be changed. Or that needs to be changed. What are your thoughts?
Birdland Crush 