Well, that was BORING. All the excitement happened in the first few innings.

I know you can’t expect much from an exhibition game, or even a regular game in an era when pitching is so dominant. But seeing so little going on had me flipping the channel to the Cartoon Network quite often.

FOX did itself no favors. Nor Baseball, for that matter. It can be fun to have players wearing microphones so you can chat with them during the game, but it should never take precedence over the game itself – especially when you’re going to ask the same stupid question (“What’s it like being here?”) every time. The absolute worst instance was when they had David Ortiz goofing around in the AL dugout while ALL TIME GREAT Miguel Cabrera was at bat for his only appearance in the game. If the purpose of the game is to promote the game’s best players, then PROMOTE THE PLAYERS. Tell us when a new player comes into the game; tell us something about them and what they did to earn the spot on the roster….

They couldn’t even get some of the obvious things right. When Ronald Acuna Jr. led off the bottom of the 1^st with a double, surely you’d show a replay that made it clear that it was a ground rule double. Yes, they showed it bouncing just fair and getting past third baseman Rafael Devers, but did it go into the stands or hit something? The commentary suggested the latter, but why not show it? When the Mets’ Jeff McNeil got hit in the foot by the pitch in his only plate appearance, wasn’t that an opportunity to note that the Mets lead the majors in HBP, to the point where earlier in the season the Mets actually asked MLB to investigate it?

And for crying out loud, keep the viewers up to date on the new players coming in on defense! This is especially vital when the teams are wearing the same crappy uniforms.

Here’s what the NL players wore in the 1977 All Star Game:

COLOR!!!!

Pretty easy to tell when a player from the Pirates gets on the field, right?

Now imagine yourself sitting in the upper deck or at home. How easy is it going to be to identify a player when they’re all wearing the same plain uniform, and you can’t make out the gold lettering on the front? And those stupid caps. Whose idea was it to put one gold star next to the logo? It looked like an asterisk! I kept wondering where the footnote was. I do like the idea of gold stars, but put one on each side of the logo!

Here’s hoping both MLB and FOX can do better next year.