Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred announced today that this July’s All-Star Baseball Game will pit the Los Angeles Dodgers against the 29ers, an all-star team representing the 29 lesser major league teams.
After a flurry of Dodger signings, re-signings, and acquisitions following last year’s World’s Series victory, bookmakers predict the L.A. team will win north of 100 games. Further, odds suggest they’re two-and-a-half times more likely than any other team to emerge victorious in the 2025 World Serious.
Pundits claim SoCal’s New World Order potentially has collected the best pitching rotation in baseball history with their three Japanese starters – Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki – lined up with Glasnow and Snell. A strengthened bullpen and offense might further force the rest of the baseball world to commit Hara-kiri.
Mad Dog Russo ranted that the Dodgers’ latest moves disgrace baseball.
Without tongue-in-cheek, Manfred actually spoke about the new all-star game format as an innovation that would “ensure the competitive balance baseball fans loves.”
In truth, with nonpareil broadcast contracts, deferred player contracts that don’t kick in the luxury tax, and SoCal media contacts and opportunities, the tax Dodgers have become their own sports oligarchy.
To determine the Evil Empire’s foe’s make-up, Manfred clarified that at least one player from each of the other teams will be named to the 29ers as part of its complete forty-man all-star roster, mirroring the Dodgers full major league roster.
The Commissioners’ Office also floated the idea of a five-inning preliminary game, matching the last fifteen players on each roster. With “leftover” Dodger starters including the soon-to-be-signed Clayton Kershaw and any combination of Gonsolin, May, Miller, and Stone, the best players from the White Sox, Rockies, Marlins, and Angels and other also-rans might also play that tilt as underdogs.
Manfred pointed out that both basketball and football have modernized all-star presentations “because the old formats were just that, old.”
They also didn’t energize wagering.
Besides skills competitions, the NFL spotlights a flag football game in the Aloha state. The baseball equivalent would find Aaron Judge hitting a whiffle ball floated in by Paul Skenes.
The NBA is also changing its actual all-star game next month in San Francisco, though it will not include a Charles Barkley rat-catching experience.
Previous editions featured no D with scoreboard numbers spinning like lines on the slot machines that sports’ new gambling partners revere. Bettors didn’t embrace the game itself any more than gamblers do betting on flag football. This year, three games to forty will resemble playground pickup games, tripling real-time betting opportunities. NBA skills competitions, at least the three-point and slam dunk contests, often proved more entertaining and wager-friendly than the all-star games themselves.
Baseball also sensed its Monday homerun contest had become more popular than its game while pleasing its partners at FanDuel and BetMGM more than the Tuesday contest. With interleague play, one league vs. another is about as enticing as betting on the Dodgers to lose over half their games would be this year. Unless, the President suddenly deports all foreign workers.
Baseball considered other options that fans and gambling sites might have embraced. To appease originalists and add action and controversy, the first option would have allowed all-star “plugging,” the option baseball’s earliest players on defense had of recording outs by plugging off-base runners with thrown baseballs.
The second option would have pitted a native American all-star team against foreign all-stars, but the powers-that-be saw that as an anticlimactic mimicking of its annual lucrative March World Baseball Classic.
Fox Sports, not to mention gambling partners, would have opted for the third discarded possibility, all-star teams representing franchises located in Red States against Blue State teams. The proposal would have enfolded the Toronto Blue Jays with the Blue-Staters, and not just because of their nickname.
While fans of both teams would have viscerally hated and betted against the other side, everybody, except SoCal and Japanese fans and front-runner everywhere will love hating the Dodgers.
And, they might also enjoy betting against them, at least once with a chance to win. Bet on it!
