All Star Notes: State Farm Home Run...(yawn)..Derby

We have a Manny sighting! Yes, that is actually Manny Ramirez, present & accounted for at the All Star festivities. Unless it's a body double he found on eBay.

The 2007 State Farm Dog & Pony Show, errr Home Run Derby kicks off in a few minutes, and boy let me tell you I can barely contain my excitement (insert sarcastic tone here.)

Here's this year's lineup: Justin Morneau, Albert Pujols, Alex Rios, Matt Holiday, Vlad Guerrero, Prince Fielder, Maggs Ordonez and defending champion Ryan Howard.

Talk about a mixed bag; Pujols, Vlad and Howard are great, but the others? Feh!

I'm not sure when the once immensly popular Derby lost its luster, but one thing is crystal clear regarding the prestige this event currently carries: it is now on par with the NBA Slam Dunk contest as the most overhyped, overblown, and overrated exhibition spectacles in all of sports.

Did it start to go downhill when we got wise to the fact that most of these guys are on steroids and/or launch the ball out of ballparks with such ease & regularity that it's no longer fun to see them try & kill themselves doing it?

Or was it when, like the Dunk Contest, the superstars started backing off from participating, leaving scrubs like Jason Bay, Hee Seop Choy, Bret Boone and Matt Holiday to partake in the contest formerly reserved for longball legends?

Maybe it just because like the dunk the homerun became so glamorized and immortalized as the biggest play in its respective sport that the backlash forced the two signature events focusing on these feats to jump the shark.

In any case I know I'll probably sit through another edition of it, subjecting myself to another year of nauseating Berman nicknames, awkward post-homer sideline chit chats, and god-awful uniforms while I try to pick out the next guy who is going to fuck up his swing so badly that he goes into a tailspin for the next year & a half.

A phenomenon I like to call Going Abreu.