Lincicome: Looking for the point to all-star games

My favorite all-star memory is of a game in Seattle years back. Not the game itself exactly but the workout day before when players loafed and visited and prided themselves that they were in each other’s company.

The recent passing of Dave Parker, the formidable Pirate, along with the pending baseball All-Star Game in Atlanta, brought this back.

I had my son David, then 10 I think, with me at the ballpark, the old Kingdome. While I collected wisdom from the players for a column since forgotten, something with Lou Brock, I think. David wandered around the clubhouse. Ah, the innocence of the time.

“Hey, kid, catch,” said Parker, tossing a baseball to him. David caught the ball, looked at it, and saw names scrawled on the ball. One of the duties of all-star players was to sign baseballs and other stuff. Merch it is called now.

“Who is Perry Gaylord?” David asked me, interrupting my chat with Brock. Huh? David was not a big baseball fan at the time.

“His name is on this ball. And Davey Lopes. That’s the same initials as mine.”

The ball had maybe seven or eight names. It had been passed around the clubhouse. Brock took the ball and signed it. David said thanks and stuck the ball into his pocket. John Stearns, a catcher with the Mets, handed my son a cracked bat, the Stearns model.

“Quite a haul,” I said, more impressed than my boy. Back home, then in Florida, I heard a whack, thump, whack outside. David was throwing the ball up against the stucco of the house and letting it bounce off the cement driveway, scuffing the names. Lou Brock had become “Lobruk.”

“You know,” I told him, “that ball might have been worth something someday. All those autographs.”

Later that evening I found David with a ballpoint pen, meticulously tracing over the names.

The argument to end all-star games has been made by me and by almost everyone else who has nothing to sell or time to kill. And now here’s another one, baseball this time, still the most recognizable of them.

Tickets remain, I understand, for Gatorade Workout Day in Atlanta, who knows why? The T-Mobile Home Run Derby follows. Who knows why?

Baseball is the least gimmicky of these things, which is like complimenting a groom for wearing shoes.

The ball is still thrown and hit and caught and score is kept by innings rather than, as in the case of the NBA, on a calculator. Last year 397 points were scored in the NBA game, causing this year to make the thing a four-team tournament, first team to 40 wins. No improvement.

Slam dunks, 3-point shots and skills competition (dribbling and stuff) are showoff distractions, still not as silly as the NFL Pro Bowl flag football format, which seems designed to give the Mannings something else to do.

The original idea for all-star games has been nullified by the availability of all sports in all sorts of formats, no longer a place to view players unseen otherwise. It is possible to see Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani any time you want. Same for Caitlin Clark, in her own all-star game anon.

Yet the honor remains to be selected as an all-star, and dissents arise when favorites are ignored or those deemed worthy are omitted (most notably this time around, Seiya Suzuki of the Cubs or Juan Soto of the Mets) for reasons no one has to explain.

Until the public stops watching (and viewing numbers are shrinking) or networks lose interest, there will be all-star games and there will be players who are proud to be all-stars, hanging out with others of their distinction.

And why not? Mostly harmless. The competition is so subdued that injuries are unlikely. No more Pete Rose bashing into Ray Fosse at home plate or Dwyane Wade breaking Kobe Bryant’s nose.

And, just to wrap up this column, I don’t know what ever happened to that All-Star baseball, but “Lobruk” did become Lou Brock again, just as he deserved to be.

As for all-star games, as pointless as they might be, any game that can make a father-son memory is OK with me.