{"id":1161,"date":"2006-07-11T04:40:00","date_gmt":"2006-07-11T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/allstar-game-americas-classic.html"},"modified":"2006-07-11T04:40:00","modified_gmt":"2006-07-11T04:40:00","slug":"allstar-game-americas-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/allstar-game-americas-classic.html","title":{"rendered":"All-Star Game: America&#8217;s Classic?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of my high school history teachers, a certain Mr. Martin, used to announce that he went to church 50 weeks a year. He avoided the two remaining Sundays, nothing less than Christmas and Easter, for those who didn&#8217;t come on the other days to make room for them. Besides, he said, he didn&#8217;t want to worship with the uncommitted. He always drew a laugh from us about that, and my recollection is that he rarely drew laughs.<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nI feel the same way about the All-Star Game. It&#8217;s a useless distraction from the real game of local teams in a league and division battling for six months to see who can pull themselves up into the World Series. When a game of sport is played and the winner doesn&#8217;t really matter, it becomes entertainment.<br \/>\nI watch real games; the entertainment-oriented fans can take my spot for the All-Star Game.<br \/>\nI stand with the hard guys and gals on this one: sports games have one purpose &#8212; to win. (Not at all costs, and not cheating, but the goal is to win.)<br \/>\nI&#8217;ll spend my time doing something besides watching that useless display of individualistic talent and endless commentary about how good someone is. The commentary, anyway, reminds me of O.A.R. songs &#8212; all alike.<br \/>\nRight now the best team, which is what matters most, is the Detroit Tigers. They&#8217;ve surprised us all, as have the NY Mets. I&#8217;d rather watch the Mets play the Tigers than watch an All-Star game.<br \/>\nJoin me in reading a good book that night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of my high school history teachers, a certain Mr. Martin, used to announce that he went to church 50 weeks a year. He avoided the two remaining Sundays, nothing less than Christmas and Easter, for those who didn&#8217;t come on the other days to make room for them. Besides, he said, he didn&#8217;t want&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>All-Star Game: America&#039;s Classic? - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/07\/allstar-game-americas-classic.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"All-Star Game: America&#039;s Classic? - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One of my high school history teachers, a certain Mr. Martin, used to announce that he went to church 50 weeks a year. 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