All-Star Game

the Fifth Line: Holiday Gifts

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Happy Holidays!

I’ve been really busy this season, so I still haven’t finished my Christmas shopping. I have no idea to get folks on my list. I started looking yesterday afternoon, and it is an utterly daunting task. Totally unrelated, I’ve been making a list of things I could get various NHL teams, if I had unlimited resources. As I run around looking for last-minute gifts for real people, I’d like to share with you the fake gifts I would give to these teams.

2009_11_19_cta_holiday_train_01

“A Stanley Cup, eh? Ho ho ho! Don’t you think you need some better Fenwick numbers before Santa tries to get you past the Blackhawks?”

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Kansas City Blues: Live-Blogging the 2012 MLB All-Star Game

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As you may recall, one of my esteemed colleagues here at the Recorder wrote in one of his first essays that baseball is a boring spectacle that has been surpassed in recent years by nigh every other major professional sport short of cricket, curling, and non-Triple Crown equestrian events.

Unfortunately, the MLB All Star Game is one of the best arguments that can be made for his position.

Like most All-Star games in the other major American sports, the All-Star game is a relic of a distant past, a game where the greatest stars of the American and National league would be pitted against each other in an exhibition of their talents. (Key word being exhibition – the game did not count for anything.) In past games, there was nothing to compete for except for pride and the sheer mystery of competing against the best teams of the other league. (This was long before interleague play became a mainstay, regularly pitting the two leagues together. Remember, it once made a difference to be in either the National or the American Leagues. Although one might call the fact that the DH is still in play makes the AL still the League of the Devil…but that’s neither here nor there.)

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