Scott Rolen got fucking ripped off

It's that time of the season in Major League Baseball when fans act like Major League Douchebags—that's right, the all-star team selection. It's that time of year when the Hollywood players (e.g Derek Jeter) make the team regardless of current season stats and performance. Although, offensively Jeter is having a good season. Lucky for him it seems like the all-star selection process in no way takes into account defence, which for every player but pitchers comprises of one-half of his performance.

Now, I know that there are many players who get the blind-eye from the fans each year, but this year's selections at third base really pissed me off: How did Scott Rolen not get the nod? Instead, Longoria was selected in a landslide and Michael Young was selected on the reserve roster. Well, fuck the fans for selecting Longoria and fuck Major League Baseball, fuck the Major League Baseball Player's Association, fuck the players, fuck the coaches, fuck the owners and especially fuck Bud Selig—like every atrocity to hit baseball since '92 I'm sure he had something to do with this one too.

Let's take a look at the vote:

1 Evan Longoria, Rays 4,315,210
2 Alex Rodriguez, Yankees 2,350,496
3 Mike Lowell, Red Sox 1,759,195
4 Michael Young, Rangers 1,741,982
5 Brandon Inge, Tigers 891,112
6 Scott Rolen, Blue Jays 850,033

First off, fuck everyone who voted for A-rod; his 0.240 average is really doing my fantasy team wonders. Mike Lowell is a fucking bum and he's now injured—karma. Michael Young is a fucking bum; I was at a game when we threw two balls over the head of the first basemen on routine plays. Fucking Brandon Inge? What a fucking joke.

Let's take a look the raw statistics. Compare Rolen to the two pieces-of-shit selected to the AL team:

Rolen

G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB AVG OBP SLG
72 268 44 88 24 0 6 30 24 31 4 0.328 0.389 0.485

Longoria

G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB AVG OBP SLG
78 286 45 83 25 0 16 64 34 73 2 0.290 0.369 0.545

Young

G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI BB SO SB AVG OBP SLG
77 315 45 99 26 1 10 33 30 53 4 0.314 0.373 0.498

Good for Longoria and his 64 RBIs; I'm sure that does something to offset the K-train he's been riding all season long—choo choo. One could argue, and I really stree could, that Rolen is slightly lacking in the power department over Logoria and Young. But, come on! He's been flirting with the Major League's number 4-5-6 spot for average all season. The man is a 7 time gold glover! Cito Gaston said he made the best play he has ever seen from thrid-base. What more do you want?

The man deserves to be at the show, and fuck you if you think otherwise.

(An honourable mention has to go out to Marco Scutaro. With the Jeter lock on the SS position, a 4th place finish in voting in his first legitimate season is well-deserved. For those of you who care, Jason Bartlett, who's having a stellar season in TB, was selected on the reserve squad at the SS position)

For those of you keeping score at home...

I decided to take those famous words uttered by Jamie Campbell to heart and attempt to keep score during yesterday's game featuring the Jays at New Yankee Stadium. First off, a copy of the scorecard can be found here.

I read up on the basics of scoring, found a decent scorecard online and sat down in front of the game with my laptop. Scoring the actual game wasn't too bad at all. There were a few instances when I had no idea what the fuck was going on, and I had to revert to the sports.yahoo.com boxscore for some help. One major mistake that I made was giving Yankee starter Chamberlain 7 earned runs instead of three on 8 runs scored) due to an error committed by third basemen Ransom; a sharply hit grounder by Rios was mishandled by Ransom, allowing Rios to first and Overbay to advance to second on an E5. At the time there was one out, so should the play had been made by Ransom—the ball was hit well enough for the 5-4-3 double play—the inning would have ended. The Jays proceeded to score 5 runs that inning, all of which were unearned because of the error. I incorrectly only scored the Rios run as unearned, my logic being that he should ot have been on base because of the error. The official ruling was that ALL runs score after the error were unearned—another example of how baseball is more fair than life itself—because the inning should have ended.

All-in-all, I'd say the scoring experience was interesting. I spent a lot time trying to sort things out: with the scorecard I was using; getting used to the rules of scoring; getting used to the abbreviations used... Although I was forced to watch the game more intensely, it seemed like I wasn't watching the game as closely as I normally would. It was a fun experience, and I'm going to try it again for today's series finale. I found a new scorecard that is slightly more detailed and I spent a considerable amount of time modifying it last night to make my life a lot easier, which should allow me to watch the game a little more closely.

We'll see how it goes...