Adam Wainwright and the Grooved Pitch Heard 'Round the World

Whether you're sick of the pathetic Derek Jeter farewell tour/death march, the obnoxious martyr-happy best-whatever-in-baseball cult surrounding the St. Louis Cardinals, or MLB's insistence on the All-Star Game being more than an exhibition, last night provided quite the windfall. When Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright confessed he gave Jeter a couple of pipe shots during his first at-bat, it gloriously undercut the myth-makers trying to frame Jeter's lead-off double as yet another example of The Captain's supposed preternatural ability to rise to the occasion. When Wainwright, either due to his own guilt or the guilt foisted upon him by others, apologized for his refreshing candor (I messed up in the way that I spoke), it allowed Cardinal haters to bask in some welcome schadenfreude. For those that thought the equally worthy Clayton Kershaw should have been chosen to start the game, the schadenfreude was even sweeter. And for those that like to bask in this sort of misery, the fall-out from Wainwright's comments provided an embarrassment of riches. There are those upset with Wainwright for grooving a pitch and disrespecting Jeter. There are those upset with Wainwright for admitting he grooved a pitch & as a result breaking one of baseball's many unwritten rules. Last but, most definitely, not least, there are those upset with Wainwright for ultimately costing the National League home-field advantage in the World Series with that supposedly grooved pitch, and the three-run rally that followed.

Because of the cockeyed ways of Major League Baseball, it's the latter folks, the ones irked about Wainwright intentionally or unintentionally costing the NL a World Series home game, whose anger is the most justified. Last night's Wainwright/Jeter fiasco reaped a whirlwind sown back in 2002, when Bud Selig's infamous intransigent shrug lead to an exhibition game ending in a tie. Because of that tie, and the bottle-throwing furor that followed it, MLB decided that the All-Star Game needed to be fixed, and that tying World Series home-field advantage to the result of the All-Star Game was the way to fix it. It would brow-beat those perennial All-Stars that perennially ginned up excuses to avoid participating in the All-Star Game a reason to come and represent their league. It would also force managers, who previously managed All-Star rosters in a mostly frivolous manner, to buckle down and play to win. As the now-unavoidable All-Star Game mantra goes, This Time It Counts. And when Pitcher A opts to toss Hitter B a cookie in order to give Hitter B one last moment of glory in the national spotlight, it spits in the face of everything that This Time It Counts represents.

The thing is, that face is a face desperately asking for some spit. When the ultimate reward for a baseball player is either a World Championship or a multi-million dollar contract, asking them to put themselves (& their future livelihood) at risk in an exhibition game in the middle of a 162-game season, regardless of that game's trumped-up importance, is a bit much. Also, between interleague play and broadcasting ventures like MLB Extra Innings and MLB.TV, the need for a nationally-televised showcase for the best players in the game has been irreversibly diminished (there's something to be said about baseball and its broadcasting partners needing to do a better job promoting its non-marquee assets, but that's a topic for another day). Trying to save a relic of a previous iteration of the sport by making its outcome determine who gets the advantage in the sport's ultimate series is absurd.

That's not to say there's no room in modern-day baseball for an All-Star Game. However, it should be purely an exhibition. It should be a place where a cross-section of baseball's finest & baseball's most-willing-to-participate let it all hang out. It should be a place where Adam Wainwright can honor Derek Jeter's career achievements by not-so-surreptitiously giving him a room-service pitch meant to lead to an extra-base hit (it would've been nicer if Jeter hit a home run on that pitch, a la Cal Ripken in his final ASG appearance, but I guess beggars with a .647 OPS on the season can't be choosers). Most importantly, it should be a place where making such a pitch doesn't mean a damn thing, especially in terms of its implications for the playoffs. As much as I like seeing both a Cardinal and a storied Yankee great being publicly shamed or embarrassed for their part in this fiasco, they're really both victims of a needlessly broken system. Hopefully, just as the 2002 All-Star Game lead baseball down this wrong-headed path, Adam Wainwright's purpose pitch in the 2014 All-Star Game will help baseball once again find its way.