Modern media rocks ... as soccer fans know

I have a love-hate relationship with baseball’s All-Star game.

See, I have always liked the All-Star game in one sense: I like sports generally and I appreciate the place they keep in American culture. The annual All-Star game is part of it all, so I have nothing against the game itself.

Besides, in general, I don’t like to dog other people’s pastimes. I have always loved soccer, which is to say that I know too much about the ugliness of little minds who are scared because you don’t like what they like. Know what I mean? Live and let live, brother.

So, on the one hand, I have no problem with baseball’s All-Star game, even if I haven’t watched one single pitch, hit or nationally televised crotch scratch for at least eight years.

But on the other hand, I really do get put off by the All-Star game’s treatment; it has always been an annual metaphor for the mainstream media’s kissy-sloppy adoration of baseball. Every year at this time, newspapers, local TV stations and other traditional mediums drop their collective panties for the sport. Anchors and (generally older) writers like to drag out all the old clichés about the great American pastime and pretend like baseball is still the twinkle in Lady Liberty’s eye.

It’s baseball! Oh, joy! Oh, rapture!

Whatever. It’s always been this way with baseball. It’s all about the nostalgia dance, set to a bit of a xenophobic backbeat. See, traditional media is generally controlled by older white dudes who are always asking, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?"  They long for the Mad Men days, when baseball ruled and they were young lions.

So allocation of space, minutes and resources for "the great game" has been increasingly disproportionate through the years to baseball’s actual level of popularity.

I’m not saying it’s not popular. It is. I’m just saying that through the 1990s and into the new century, it got more coverage than it deserved … all because the decision makers love them some nostalgia and some baseball.

Anyway, all that always hits home around the All-Star game.

And the connection to soccer? Well, obviously, a general adoration of baseball always served to push not just soccer, but lots of other sports and events, into the background. For instance, I find it absolutely stunning how UFC’s popularity has blossomed with virtually NO acknowledgement from mainstream media until very recently.

So now back to the point of this post:

Mainstream media influence slips further every day. Today it’s more white noise than it was yesterday. And tomorrow will be worse than today. It’s still important. But the relevance of daily newspapers, the 6’oclock news and the nightly national news shows has dwindled significantly.

So now it’s all about new media – mostly thanks to the internet, of course. As we all know, the internet at its best is an all-inclusive buffet. If you can’t find news, information, blogs, opinions, forums, images, etc. of whatever is your thing, well, you’re not really trying.

So the All-Star game is tonight and I don’t have to pay a bit of attention if I don’t wish to.

Every year, I can blissfully ignore the All-Star game but still remain fully connected to the outside world.

Tonight? I’ve got a regular Tuesday night pickup soccer game. Then we’ll head over to the Dubliner, one of the area’s soccer friendly pubs. (A traditional Irish pub owned by a nice fellow from Dublin but managed, oddly, by a bunch of American fellows who support England’s West Ham. Go figure.)

My boys and I will talk about soccer. About David Beckham’s first MLS match of 2009, coming up Thursday, about the release today of Grant Wahl’s stirring book The Beckham Experiment. We’ll probably talk about the upcoming Chelsea-Club America match in Dallas, and maybe argue about Carlos Tevez’s Manchester shuffle from United to City.

All the while, Fox Soccer Channel’s night report will be on in the background.

And I’ll bet someone a pint (the good stuff, naturally) that my friends from FSC will not say a word about that All-Star game going on in St. Louis.