King Kaufman's Sports Daily

My American League All-Star ballot: No Yankees and two Tigers. What a world!

June 30, 2004 | The All-Star voting ends at the stroke of midnight Wednesday. Actually it ends at 11:59 p.m. EDT, but that's not nearly as romantic. I can't imagine Vincent Price intoning, "At the stroke of 11:59 p.m. ..."

But I digress. Right there in the lead.

I find as I get older that I become less and less exercised about the fan voting for the All-Star Game. It used to drive me batty that people insisted on voting Crusty Veteran X in when obviously Rising Youngster Y was a superior player having a better year and deserved to start. Nowadays, I feel like I have better things to worry about, like what to have for lunch.

If the people of this great nation want to see ol' Veteran X start at short in the Midsummer Classic, even though Veteran X has spent most of the year on the disabled list and is hitting .136 in the handful of games he has appeared in -- exclusively in left field -- then by gosh who am I to object?

For the last few years I've been thinking that my newfound equanimity was a product of fans making better choices, thanks to the way the Internet has made it so much easier than it used to be to keep up with teams other than the local nine. Those All-Star ballot travesties that were once so common have become pretty rare.

But of the eight players leading the American League voting in the latest totals, announced Monday, I only have three on my All-Star ballot. If the latest numbers hold up, Hideki Matsui of the Yankees, who I don't think is close to being an All-Star starter, will be an All-Star starter on July 13 in Houston. And I'll live. I'm leaning toward a quesadilla, by the way.

But it's still fun to fill out a ballot, an annual ritual. Major League Baseball will announce the starters on Sunday. In the meantime, here's my A.L. All-Star team, with the N.L. to follow Thursday. Voting results refer to the figures that were released Monday. All stats are through Tuesday's games.

CATCHER

Voting leader: Ivan Rodriguez, Tigers
My pick: Rodriguez

I-Rod is having a monster season. Any time you've got a catcher leading the league in hitting, never mind leading the league in hitting by a lot, something special is going on. Rodriguez is hitting .376, 21 points higher than runner-up Melvin Mora, with 103 hits, an on-base percentage of .416 and 10 home runs. Twenty-five-year-old Victor Martinez of the Indians is having a nice year too, his first as a regular. He's been a little better than Jorge Posada of the Yankees, who ought to get some lifetime achievement consideration. Rodriguez rightly leads the voting by plenty over Posada, with Martinez a distant fifth.

Next page: A Yankees-free infield, plus Bad Vlad, Manny and ... you have to have three outfielders, right?