If you don't like the All-Star Game...

One of our most vivid baseball memories is of Fred Lynn hitting a grand slam off Atlee Hammaker in the 1983 All-Star Game. When we close our eyes, we can still see that ball sailing into the seats in old Comiskey Park, all of these 26 years later.

Which brings us to this: If you don't like the All-Star Game, then I suggest you go find a dark hole into which you can crawl for the next two days and shut the fuck up about it. (This includes you, freeloading mainstream media fatheaded pigboy catering-vacuuming ingrates. Shut it.) It drives us beyond batty every year to hear people - especially those who get paid to watch these games - whine and moan about all of the game's shortcomings.

Seriously, nobody's making anybody watch the game if they don't want to, so feel free to find somewhere else to direct your misery if the notion of an exhibition game of the best players in the game somehow offends your sensibilities.

We don't particularly care if the game doesn't "mean anything", nor do we care that it means too much because of the home field advantage that's bestowed to the winning league. We're not bent out of shape that some guys didn't make the team, and we don't care that the rosters are absurdly big to include all the teams representatives. We don't care that this might not be the best 60-odd players in the Majors battling for supremacy.

The All-Star game is a fun diversion in the middle of a long season. Frankly, we think that people have tried so hard to beat the fun out of baseball that they forget the fact that the game itself is a much-needed diversion.

Go Doc. Go Aaron. Go AL.