Well, the Major League Baseball All Star Game was last night. It appeared to be a decent game, well-played by both sides, ending at 4-3 in favor of the American League. None of that really matters, though. It didn't really accomplish what an All Star Game should. It definitely felt more like the NFL Pro Bowl than the NBA All Star Game. To clarify, the Pro Bowl is typically a very boring affair with the players that bothered to show up just ambling around the field in a basic haze of disinterest, while the NBA All Star Game is usually more of a spectacle with lots of scoring, excitement and demonstration of skills (other than defense, of course). The baseball All Star Game is pretty nice since it falls in the middle of the season (as it should) and features the Home Run Derby, along with some events that nobody really cares about.

The big problem with the All Star Game isn't really the game itself, it the fact that it falls in the middle of summer and is played on a Tuesday. As a result, Major League Baseball doesn't play games on the Monday before or Wednesday after, thus creating a three-day "All Star Break". The aforementioned Homerun Derby always takes place on Monday evening and the game is always on Tuesday, which leaves that Wednesday night (tonight, ehem) as a complete black hole. It's the middle of July and baseball is the only thing going (besides So You Think You Can Dance? and Harry Potter movies, of course.

The only other sports active right now are golf (the British Open starts tomorrow morning at about 4am local time), tennis (Wimbledon just ended), soccer (still soccer), cylcing (Tour de France currently happening) and auto racing (the biggest story in NASCAR right now is a driver on Meth). These aren't exactly suitable replacements for the sheer delight of spending a weeknight on the couch switching between the local broadcasts of multiple games via the MLB Extra Innings package.

This doesn't even address the matter of fantasy baseball. Three days of no games and no significant roster activity is a whole other nuisance and impetus for boredom. Let the record show that the 2009 version of "the worst day of the year in sports" resulted in a night full of Planet Earth watching.