Baseball's All-Star Game

Meh. I don't even watch the All-Star Game, but I do notice it. To me, its arrival is a sort of death knell for the season. The All-Star Game is the half-time gong, and it gongs loudly. When the All-Star Game is played, you realize the season is middle-aged. It makes me sigh and feel hopeless.

I'll take Spring Training over the All-Star Game anytime because it's like being at work late on a Friday afternoon. The fun is all ahead of you. That's what makes Fridays and Spring Training so marvelous: the promise.

And then when the baseball season actually begins, you think, "Woot! I've got the entire season ahead of me!" But that statement isn't even true after the first game ends. You've used one up already -- and the season is about to shoot past you at lightning speed.

So before you know it, and way before you're ready for it, they throw the damn All-Star game at you. It's kind of like the doctor calling to say, "There's something on your X-ray. We don't know what it is but we think we should look into it." Your life is immediately ruined because someone dangled death in front of you.

That's the way it is with the All-Star Game. The minute the game is over there's a whiff of something rotten in the air. It's the knowledge that the dream is heading toward collapse -- at which point you'll be left all alone again, a baseball-less person sobbing on that uncomfortable bed in the rear guest room.

But the horrible truth is that there's no way to slow a baseball season down or force it to keep going forever. The current baseball season will come to an end just like every season that came before it. I'm not going to cry yet. After all, the All-Star Game hasn't even been played. But soon, very soon, darkness will begin to descend and a cold, ill wind will strike my brow and whisper to me of endings.

I feel it coming. It's just over the hill. Yuck, the All-Star Game!