(Mandatory Credit: Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports)
Baseball’s wackiest time of year—All-Star game voting—is underway, a one-month period when Major League Baseball delegates to fans much of the power to choose who plays in the game’s annual midsummer display of supposedly its best players. Fans determine, sometimes by merit and sometimes not, the starters by voting on candidates chosen by the teams. Nine KC Royals appear on the “Phase 1” ballot.
And if the van vote puts a certain Royal in the game, cries for ballot reform may follow.
The potential selection of Nicky Lopez to the team sizes up as simply wrong, not the kind of excellent choice catcher Salvador Perez and left fielder Andrew Benintendi could be.