All-Star Game

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I won't even come close to watching the baseball All-Star game to the conclusion. In fact, I wouldn't tune in at all if my boy Jeter wasn't batting 2nd. I may be one of the top three biggest baseball fans in the world, but I take the All-Star break off. Four days without worrying about the standings is a welcome break.

Yet I also think about the only All-Star games I ever made - as a Little League baseball player - and how proud and happy I was with that little trophy. I can recall walking around as though I were king crap and on my way to a big league career. I lost that trophy years ago - one of the dogs chewed it to pieces.

Which brings me to the basketball camp that the kids are attending. I watched 2 out of 3 of them lose their games yesterday. It wasn't that they didn't play well, but they didn't win, and they didn't get voted camper of the day either. And they didn't much take it in stride.

"It sucks," Jake said by way of explanation.
"I was raped," Matt said when a ref blew a call.
"They didn't pass me the ball," Sam complained.

And I thought of all the guys from high school and college who received all the accolades for being the star athletes. I think of the girls that wanted the boys because they could run or throw or shoot.

It was easy to figure out that I never got a girl for any of those reasons. Yet I can remember feeling jealous of those guys. I was only an all-star once, and I received a most improved player award on one of my basketball teams - and that was akin to saying that I didn't suck as bad as I did the year before.

I had wanted to be MVP. I wanted to be the guy who sank the winning shot. I actually had the opportunity in one game and clanked it hard off the backboard (a brick as they call it) - I was raped on the shot.

Yet in the end, I got a good-looking chick anyway.

There isn't a trophy on my mantle - but I don't have a mantle either - and if worse comes to worse I can do what Woody Boyd did in one CHEERS episode - I'll buy my own awards because goshdarnit, I am an all-star, and people like me.

As it all played out though - it doesn't really matter.

Just like the game tonight.

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