I suppose this could be merged with the MLB thread if necessary, but I'd like to hear people's thoughts on this.

We all know the Home Run Derby is pretty much a joke, but it's no big deal because it doesn't mean anything. It's just players having fun, and spectacors getting to see a bunch of dingers. But I've felt my desire to watch it waned throughout the last decade with steroids being on everyone's mind. Sure, it meant nothing, but it was still cool to see who could hit the most home runs. But it losts its appeal when it became clear that the home run hitters in the game were the biggest juicers. Sure it was fun in 1999 watching Mark McGwire hitting them in Fenway, but in hindsight it's like "who gives a fuck, he's a cheater".

But not only has my interest in the event been tarneshed, but a question needs to be asked. Is/was the home run derby bad for major league baseball? We all know that the allure of steroids was to improve your stats, but mainly, your power stats. Bonds started going heavy on the juice when he got jealous seeing Sosa and McGwire compete for the HR title in 1998. So by having the home run derby, are/were we contributing to the over glorification of the home run, and driving more players to take steroids?

I'm certain that the glorification of the home run is largely responsible for how widespread steroids became, but did the derby have anything to do with perpetuatig it? Maybe not, but maybe.

Thoughts please.

steriods or no steriods, the derby sucks. unwatchable, especially with espn in the mix.

Yeah, ESPN does a piss poor job with it.

You sure it wasn't the quest for bags full of cash that was responsible for how widespread steroids became?

im sure the owners and gms and coaches all knew, but it helped them out to get the wins and have that job security

The idea of HRD is great, the execution is absolutely horrible. When you have hard-core baseball fans who are completely disinterested in watching, you're doing something wrong. The damn thing went on almost 3 hours. You can play an entire NFL game in just over that. It was horribly long.

I guess you can correlate the HRD to the PED era, but until your post, I never really put the two together....especially when you consider Hamilton's performance last year.

If any of us were 11 it might be a bigger deal. It's maybe not as fun as it used to be. Part of it might be the fact that we don't like the players as much as we did when we were younger. Still a 458 ft HR is still a pretty awesome site. It's just fairly long and slow.

Also Interleague play takes a lot of the allure away from all of the AS Game events but I do tune in for a few hitters.

Seeing Joe Mauer was cool.

I just don't see why it lasted so long. 1 hour to 1.5 is a gracious plenty. 2 rounds is enough.

The game tonight will be too much pregame/hype/sell commercials...and not all that interesting.

browsing through the channels, i stopped and watched 6 pitches go by until anything was swung on.

perhaps making it mandatory to swing at every 3rd pitch max would speed things up, or maybe see who can hit the most HR's in x amount of time, and bring in pitching machine so everyone sees the same pitch?

who won?

Seeing as how at least half of those named as PED users have been pitchers, I wouldn't be so certain the HR was largely responsible. Like Andy Pettite explained, he used to recover from injury faster.

As bad as it usually is, it was even worse last night because of that ESPN Trax which was awful. Way worse that Fox's hockey puck.

I can't think of any other event they could replace the Derby with that would be a guaranteed sell-out during the All-Star break.

Why don't they have an ump calling strikes and limit the number of strikes you can take like they used to?

its terrible

yeah, at one point, I think it was Howard that saw one Inside, Outside and Center before the coach kind of looked at him and said where, the next one was down the middle and he still watched it. Essentially this is glorified beer league softball. Guys that have 0 plate dicipline all of a sudden become super selective?

Ryan Howard usually has zero plate discipline?

Have you seen his strikeout totals?

I like this idea. It would be a good way to get real pitchers involved too. It's nice that guys bring their old high school coaches and whatnot, but I think a guy like Wakefield, who didn't get a sniff in the actual game, would have had fun lobbing balls across the plate.

Have you seen his walk totals?

I think the Slam Dunk competition is even worse than the derby.