Sunday, June 01, 2008

A good day?, and a proposal for ASG voting

The three teams that matter most to me will all be playing this afternoon. The KC Royals will try to mount a winning streak of two games at 1:05, which is the same time the Huskers will try to stay alive in their Regional after yesterday's loss to UC-Irvine. Then at 2:00, Carlos Rosa pitches for the O-Royals, which is obviously kind of a big deal. This could be a very good baseball day for me, or an exceptionally bad one.

Anyway, that's not the point at all. The point is, I got an e-mail from Nicole, a fellow bloggerette who has this proposal about voting for this year's All-Stars:

Hi, I'm a blogger in Wisconsin who covers the Brewers (cutesports.blogspot.com and here) and I had a thought on All Star voting that I think might be mutually beneficial and I thought I'd run it by you.

I'm not sure about your ballclub, but the Brewers go all out trying to push the All-Star voting by their fans. I've literally seen kids walk out of the stadium carrying boxes of unpunched ballots (3000 or so to a box). They offer incentives for every 10 ballots turned in with raffles of autographed merchandise.

I realized that I punch in all my Brewers and then arbitrarily vote for members of the AL. If I feel like reading over it, I try not to punch any Yankees or Red Sox, but for the most part, I just go right down the line. I don't care who's on the AL team.

If my theory is correct, AL voters feel the same way and I do about voting for the NL team, especially if they're voting in mass quantity.

So I propose we two fan bases tie together and agree to vote together. All your NL votes go to Brewers, all our AL votes go to Royals.

We're both small market teams with limited coastal media exposure and a long shot at getting more than one guy on the All-Star roster. As all our "opposite league" votes are just throw aways, why don't we start a campaign of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

We involve other team blogs, spread the word, and make a difference.

I've thought about possible detractors, and I don't see any. I can only speak from this side, but since they're handing out ballots 3000 at a time, I don't think the Brewers have any problem with stuffing the ballot boxes. If we're doing it anyway for our guys, why don't we help each other out.

What do you think? I know it's a bit late for the idea, but we do have 6 weeks til the game and I really think that it we can get this going, we could make it a yearly tie-together and get some midwestern love for our little teams that could.

Nicole

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm so conflicted about the ASG.. last year we pushed to get the Tigers in, and they fell apart after the game. So this year I'm not voting for them... I'll vote for all Royals if you want!

Minda said...

That would be super to vote for all Royals (although whether any of them are actually All-Star material is another matter entirely). But if getting a team's players into the ASG means a 2nd-half fall-apart, then umm... no thanks. :)

Anonymous said...

This year, unlike others, we have two legit All-Stars -- Greinke and Soria.

Neither should be elected but should be selected by the AL manager.

Terrific work on this site and others -- there are very few good Royals bloggers.

Anonymous said...

I think the ASG should be eliminated. The AL always wins. Let all players rest for 4 or 5 days and maybe we'll have better baseall for the second half.

Minda said...

Chris - of course Greinke and Soria qualify! I was just thinking about the scary graphic that pops up when you go to royals.com, wherein you're prompted to vote for the Royals, and then it has pictures of all the position players. I can't think of any whom I'd vote into the ASG at this point. Which makes me very sad, of course.

Raleigh - You know as well as anyone how much I hate the all-star break! Every year, it is the longest three days of my entire life. Gag.