Stuffing the All Star Ballot Box
We went to the A’s game a while ago on a Monday night. We had good seats by the 3rd base line so we heckled Melvin Mora (Hey Melvin, you’re not good at baseball. Yeah, you heard that right. You are bad at baseball!) It was cold and a pitcher’s duel, so we did what any good A’s fan would: we stuffed the ballot box. Because it is not longer 1989, (living in the past! 3,000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax; you’re goddamned right I’m living in the past.) Major League Baseball has figured out that the best way to stop ballot stuffing is to give each ballpark the same number of ballots, so the only stuffing happens over the internet and the only people with enough time to stuff ballots that way are the Japanese, thus guaranteeing that Ichiro will be an All-Star until at least 2050 (despite that his OPS that is .143 points lower than Jack Cust’s.) Because just voting for A’s would have become an exercise in hanging chad removal, we started doing a different theme for each All-star ballot:
They started off simply enough, with A’s and former A’s:
AL
1B D. Barton
2B M. Ellis
SS B. Crosby
3B E. Chavez (who cares that he hasn’t played yet this season?)
C K. Suzuki
DH J. Cust
OF Emil Brown
OF C. Denorfia (recently demoted to AAA)
OF R. Sweeney
NL
1B None
2B R. Durham
SS M. Tejada
3B None
C J. Kendall
OF M. Kotsay
OF E. Byrnes
OF A. Ethier (former A’s farmhand.)
It was cold and only voting for current and former A’s lost its thrill after about 2 ballots when my fingertips started turning blue, so we started onto other things to base our vote on (onfield play obviously wasn’t an option) The first was the “all-players with funny names” team:
AL
1B C. Kotchman (Some guys are tits men and some guys are ass men but Casey is a Kotchman.)
2B M. Grudzielanek
SS Jhonny Peralta (with honorable mention going to Yuniesky Betancourt.)
3B Chone Figgins (His name is Chone.)
C A.J. Pierzynski
DH A. Huff (His last name is a slang term for inhaling glue and abusing glue is hilarious.)
OF Milton Bradley (The inspiration for the funny name team.)
OF Coco Crisp
OF David DeJesus
NL
1B A. Pujols (Pronounced Poo-Holes)
2B D. Uggla
SS T. Tulowitzki (Putting an x, y, z, or “ski” in a name creates instant comedy gold. That’s just a fact.)
3B Nom-ah Garciaparr-ah
C Yorvit Torreabla
OF K. Fukudome (Welcome to the Fuku Dome!)
OF X. Nady (See Tulowitzki)
OF F. Pie (He’s named after desert and had a truly gruesome injury.)
Having made fun of people’s names, we created the all Wasp-y sounding team
AL
1B K. Millar (Daric Barton would have been a strong contender if he didn’t have a weird white trash spelling of “Derrick.”
2B Aaron Hill
SS Adam Everett (Jason Bartlett was a close 2nd, but he looks way less WASPy)
3B Casey Blake
C Gerald Laird
DH The original vote was for B Butler, but in writing this post, we discovered that the “B” stands for the deliciously white trash “Billy Ray” so it is going to have to be the deeply un-waspy Gary Sheffield.
OF Josh Hamilton (his making this team is made more amusing by his drug abuse.)
OF Brad Wilkerson
OF Gary Matthews Jr.
NL
1B
2B Chase Utley
SS J. Keppinger
3B David Wright
C J.R. Towles
OF Ryan Braun
OF Ryan Ludwick
OF Josh Willingham
Italian Names (Where have you gone Mike Piazza, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.)
AL
1B J. Giambi
2B D. Pedroia
SS J. Peralta
3B J. Crede
C M. Napoli (with honorable mention going to D. Navarro and J. Posada)
DH F. Catalanotto
OF D. DeJesus
OF David Dellucci
OF C. Denorfia
NL
1B J. Votto
2B M. DeRosa
SS
3B R. Aurilia
C Paul Lo Duca (with honorable mentions to R. Paulino, G. Soto, and M. Rabelo)
OF Shane Victorino
OF A. Soriano
OF K. Fukudome (you can leave the Fuku Dome whenever you want, but you can never check out. You might ask what that has to with him being Italian. Go ahead, ask it. That’s what we thought. I love have a readership made up exclusively of people stalking Emma Watson.)
Finally the level of discourse finished at an all time high by doing a ballot with the most “Jew(y) Sounding Names.” If you want to call it the “3,000 years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax” category, we won’t hold it against you, but our preference is “Where Have You Gone Shawn Greene? The Nation of Israel Turns a Lonely Eye to You.”
AL
1B C. Kotchman
2B I. Kinsler (Wikipedia says he’s actually Jewish!)
SS David Eckstein
3B Hank Blalock
C Greg Zaun
DH Travis Hafner
OF D DeJesus (Isn’t Jesus, King of the Jews? They must love him!)
OF J.D. Drew (Drew rhymes with Jew.)
OF Johnny Damon (WWJDD? What would Johnny Damon Do?)
NL
1B D. Ortmeier
2B
SS K. Greene
3B R. Zimmerman
C B. Schneider
OF R. Braun
OF Write in Gabe Kapler
OF Write in Shawn Green
And smug sport writers say that the fans don’t select a good All-Star team. . .
