Horatio Caine called-- he wants his melodrama back.

It is clear that many grueling hours of preparation have gone into the television drama er, sporting event that is the All-Star game. I mean, the 6,432,674 pages of Joe Buck's pregame dialogue alone must have taken months to type into that teleprompter. I realize that a lot of blood, sweat and tears go into pulling off an event such as this, so far be it from me to complain. But what the heck. Today is your lucky day; I'm going to anyway.

I know it's supposed to be a baseball game, but come on--couldn't they have spent just a few minutes on pomp and ceremony? Taken themselves a teensy bit more seriously?  Rushing through the starting lineup as though it's just another ho-hum game seems wrong somehow. I mean, did they not get the memo that this time it COUNTS?! This is not merely a baseball game! It is an historic event that should be hyped and touted and milked for every last drop of drama it could ever hope to possess, squeezed bone dry of anything remotely resembling theatrics, ballyhoo-ed to the point of nauseating everyone in attendance and/or viewership...you get the point. 

With that in mind, could they not have come up with a few more old timers to honor tonight? A few more awards to present to people? More of the cast members of Sex & The City to make speaches to the crowd? Perhaps they could have added a few more seconds to those melodramatic pauses in between the player/hall-of-famer/groundsmen/hot dog vendor introductions. If they were merely short on subject matter, goodness, they could have bothered to take a few moments to remind us (ten thousand times) of the majestic/regal/stately edifice that is Yankee Stadium, the glorious richness of its history, and its impending demise. Or at very least bother to make mention of Josh Hamilton's heartwrenching triumph over adversity. Somebody just wasn't thinking tonight.

It only took 43 minutes to announce the starting lineup, guys. That is downright shameful. If you can stretch a 12-minute homerun derby into 3+ hours, there is no reason the actual All Star game can't go six or seven hours, minimun. Maybe ESPN is just running low on drag-this-thing-out-as-long-as-humanly-possible material. If that's the case, they should look into adding a few more commercial breaks to the ordeal. (Am I the only one who thinks there was a sad lack of advertising during the game?)

Geez, was any baseball actually played tonight? I'd like the last four hours of my life back, please. I guess that's why God invented the mute button, a fact I will not be forgetting at the All-Star break in '09.

EDIT: It appears the powers that be have read my blog, and acted accordingly-- 15 innings should stretch things out sufficiently.