For any baseball league on the planet, the all-star format has become as expected as the end-of-season championship series. It is now a staple of the game. Leagues use the all-star game to motivate players, attract attention for the players as well as for the league and to generate excitement (if not dollars) from fans.

And so what makes for a great all-star game? That is the question I pondered Saturday night after the Arizona Fall League’s 2009 Rising Stars game in Surprise, Arizona. This year’s was the fourth all-star showcase.

I would argue the criteria for a great all-stars game are pretty straightforward:

1.  The best player talent
2.  A great fan experience
3.  Something to play for
4.  Memorable plays
5.  Great conditions and a great location

Based on my 5-star criteria, I’d give this year’s Arizona Fall League Rising Stars game a 2.5 (possibly a 3.5 if the outcome impacts the championship game, which I do not know and they do not tell you.).

Here are the facts about the league and the Rising Stars game:
All 30 Major League teams send their top prospects to develop and accelerate during the fall in sunny Arizona, where they play for one of six teams – the Mesa Solar Sox, Phoenix Desert Dogs and Scottsdale Scorpions in the East and the Peoria Javelinas, Peoria Saguaros and Surprise Rafters in the West.

The 30 teams place their top prospects with teams that are mostly aligned with where those MLB teams play during spring training.  The Seattle Mariners are in Peoria, the San Francisco Giants are in Scottsdale and so on. Each AFL team then sends its top players to the Rising Stars game.

I wanted to attend this year’s game because my son and I had watched several of this year’s Rising Stars when they were All-Stars in the Cape Cod Baseball League a few years ago. Yonder Alonso, Buster Posey, Jason Castro, Chase D’Arnaud, Drew Storen were just a few of the names I remembered from recent Cape League seasons.

Add to that list top round draft picks like pitcher Mike Leake and Josh Fields or hitters like Dustin Ackley, Carlos Triunfel, Brandon Allen, Mike Moustakas, Jemile Weeks, and you’ve got an unbelievable lineup of talent.

Sadly, the top pitching prospect, Stephen Strasburg, was a late scratch, and other top players also were scratched.

So on criteria #1, I give the AFL a half-star. The one-half deduction is not their fault, but it is a deduction from a fan perspective.

Speaking of fans, I can’t give a star on fan experience – especially when I compare this game with the Cape League’s All-Star Game. Unlike the Cape League, fans in the Rising Stars game are more like background noise. That was especially true with the MLB Network broadcast, which decided to keep the grassy areas in the outfield free of kids.  The network personnel also seemed to keep the game moving along.

Batting practice, which began at 3:30 pm, was closed to the public. In the Cape League it’s all part of the celebration. There was no autograph session like there is on the Cape, in fact players blew past my 12-year old who patiently waited for hours. No worries, the prospects happily stopped for the overweight professional autograph collectors who positioned themselves perfectly. Sorry, kid.

This did not detract from the fun of the game, but I do think the AFL is missing an opportunity. Someone who loves engaging fans with the stars of tomorrow should get involved with the AFL. They might talk with someone in the Cape League about how the CCBL does the best all-star game from a fan perspective, short of the MLB.

On criteria #3, I honestly don’t know if the Rising Stars game has any impact on the end-of-season championship game. I think the MLB’s decision to give home field advantage to the league that wins the All-Star game is brilliant – it gives players and fans some motivation beyond the showcase.

Criteria #4 is really the most important one in many ways. You come to see great players do amazing things. And on Saturday night we saw a very good game.

In the bottom of the 8th inning, with the West trailing by a run, catcher Mike McBride ( the Cleveland Indians catcher pinch-hitting for Jason Castro) hit a two-run home run to give his western all-stars the lead and ultimately the victory. The West won 8-7.

McBride got his game-winning homer off former Cotuit Kettleer Drew Storen, who fans may recall gave up the game-winning hit to allow the Harwich Mariners to win their first Cape League Championship in years.

Game Notes:

•  Yonder Alonso definitely gets the Cape League’s best performer. He hit .750 with two singles and a double. The two-RBI double was to straightaway center and was hit deep.
•  Buster Posey had a single and a walk.
•  Mike Minor, a prospect for the Atlanta Braves, started for the West but had a disastrous first inning. He gave up 7 runs (an ERA of 81), and managed to retire just two batters before he got the hook. A deep hole but the West eventually dug out of it.
•  Dustin Ackley has the sweetest, smoothest swing I’ve seen. Moustakas has an in-and-out swing but he delivers good power with it.
•  During BP Alonso hit to all fields, including the one beyond the fences.
•  The crowd on Saturday night was more than 5,000, which apparently set an AFL record.

For (Seattle) Mariners fans, I have to call out that we were well represented on the field. Josh Fields was lights out – retiring 4 in a row (all easy fly balls to the right side). Carlos Triunfel had a lead-off homer after hitting a hard shot off his front foot. Ackley showed great discipline at the plate.

On criteria #5, no complaints. Surprise is a terrific stadium and the weather could not have been nicer (especially if you come from rainy Seattle). Traffic and parking were easy.

I hope to see the MLB Network broadcast. I wonder if anyone watched the game? How was it from the comfort of your living room?

PostScript:  I just found a fan’s video coverage from the game on YouTube.

CodBall

Sean Doolittle and Brett Wallace, both former Cape League stars, played in last year’s AFL Rising Stars game.

Rosters for this Saturday’s matchup, which will be broadcast at 8 pm Eastern by MLB network, have not yet been announced but Cape fans will remember a few names from the recent past.

Among the hitters are Yonder Alonso,  Buster Posey and Jason Castro.

I noticed that former Cotuit pitcher Drew Storen  is playing in the AFL. Drew was tagged with the loss in the 2008 championship when the Harwich Mariners got a walk-off hit to win it all. Storen was reported to be pitching that night at 100 mph.

Drew also has joined us in the blogosphere as a blogger for the Washington Nationals.  You can also follow Drew on Twitter.

We also reported on CodBall about Mike Leake, who did not play in the Cape League but caught our eye when the Arizona Sun Devils played at Safeco Field in Seattle this past season.

The Cape Cod Times calls last year’s All-Star Game a “success” because it drew 11,000 fans. I am hesitant to call it a success based on numbers alone, since I know many fans were disappointed after making the trek to Boston. But, whether the league had a rain-date or not, the game would have ended the same way. I think most fans were disappointed by the weather and the date the league chose, and not how the league managed the game.

Based on the Red Sox’s 2010 schedule, the league may be able to schedule a definite rain-date next season since the Sox will be on a road trip July 19th-29th. This also leaves open the possibility for a weekend game. What do you think?

This week I received an email from ESPN notifying us that Josh’s story of struggle will be featured on the network’s award-winning E-60 news program on Tuesday, Oct. 27, at 7 p.m. ET.

As Dave reported five months ago, Josh went from the Cape League to the independent Frontier League, where he lived with an elderly couple in an assisted living home in order to make ends meet.

According to ESPN:

ESPN’s award-winning primetime newsmagazine E:60 will feature the heartwarming story of a minor league baseball player who brightened the lives of some senior citizens….

Like many young men, Josh Faiola is chasing his dream of one day playing Major League Baseball. After his release from the Baltimore Orioles organization this spring, Faiola caught on with the Lake Erie Crushers (Avon, Ohio) of the independent Frontier League. Because the league’s players are paid so little, most players live with local host families who volunteer to take a player into their home for the summer. But Faiola’s found a different kind of host family – an assisted living facility with 28 senior citizens with an average age of 83. E:60 follows Faiola and the residents of the facility through the summer, documenting one young man chasing his baseball dream, and the effect that dream had on his new family of surrogate grandparents.

I like this better than the 2009 format. That one game play-in was a bad idea. Baseball is not meant to be played by having one game decide a playoff. It happened in MLB last year with the Twins-White Sox and this year with the Twins-Tigers, but there isn’t much else you can do if teams are tied after 162 games.

I understand why some people won’t like the idea of 8 of the 10 teams making the playoffs. That’s getting close to the watered-down NHL where so many teams qualify that it’s hard not to make the playoffs. I’m OK with it in the CCBL though because most years, the talent gap on the Cape doesn’t seem that great from one team to another – even from the first place team to the fourth place team. This change does place less value on a team’s accomplishments over the 44 game regular season. I would probably feel differently about the change if – to use 2009 as an example – Brewster (18 points behind Y-D) and Falmouth (16 pts. behind Bourne) had somehow gotten hot at the right time and ended up playing for the league championship. 18 and 16 points is a large gap over a short season and it certainly shows that Y-D and Bourne were vastly superior to Brewster and Falmouth. Geez, I’m talking myself out of my initial positive reaction already. Those splinters are starting to hurt from sitting on the fence. I am very glad that the league is going back to an East vs. West format for the championship round.

I’m guessing that one of the factors driving these changes is money, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Teams will lose one home date by hosting a doubleheader. There may be a cost savings if Bourne only has to travel to Orleans once. Eight teams will make up that date by hosting at least one playoff game. More teams will have a chance to host more than one playoff game. A first place team that makes it all the way to the championship round could host as many as six playoff games. That would be a significant income boost.

The two last place teams will have 21 home dates instead of 22. When reading the story literally, it says “teams will play at least one scheduled doubleheader at home and one on the road.” That seems to leave the door open for a team to host more than one scheduled doubleheader, in addition to any doubleheaders that may have to be played due to postponements.

At the very least, we now know that the 2010 season will open on Sunday, June 13.

Google Calendar recently added sports calendars that you can easily subscribe to. When going through the minor league baseball list, I also noticed Cape League teams in the mix. They are listed right there alongside the PawSox, Seadogs, and Spinners. Weird, but I won’t complain.

Hall of Famer Harold “Pie” Traynor posthumously heads the 10-member Class of 2009. Longtime Pirates third baseman Traynor played for both Falmouth and Oak Bluffs in 1919 and is one of only two Cape Leaguers to be elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame (catcher Carlton Fisk is the other.).

Traynor  is joined by four other former big leaguers:

• Cotuit outfielder Greg Vaughn, who starred for the Brewers;
• Harwich hurler Joe Magrane, who pitched for the Cardinals, White Sox and Angels;
• Hyannis catcher Bill Schroeder, a former Brewers player and current television analyst;
• Orleans double threat Art Quirk, who pitched for the Orioles and Senators;
• Wareham and Yarmouth-Dennis designated hitter/first baseman Mark Angelo;
• Orleans slugger John Awdycki;
• Chatham closer Zane Carlson;
• All-Star player and manager Lou Lamoriello;
• Chatham manager Joe “Skip” Lewis.

 Bobby Valentine and Peter Gammons will attend the Nov. 14th induction.

Got a kick out of seeing the press release from the University of North Carolina in which it is noted that Chatham teammates Matt Harvey and Patrick Johnson will be the opposing pitchers in Game 1 of UNC’s “2009 Fall World Series.”

While watching the football game between #1 ranked Florida and #4 LSU tonight, I couldn’t help but think about Florida receiver Riley Cooper’s short stay on the Cape this summer. Cooper saw very limited action in three of Cotuit’s first five games. Tonight he caught a pass from roommate Tim Tebow for the only touchdown of the game in Florida’s 13-3 win. I wasn’t thinking of Cooper’s exploits on the ballfields across the Cape, but more about what it must be like to play in front of a national television audience and a record-setting 93,129 roaring fans at Tiger Stadium on a Saturday night. I’ll bet that almost compares to playing in front of one of those crowds at Lowell Park.

LSU two-sport star Chad Jones is a phenomenal athlete. Although we haven’t seen him on the Cape, he came into his own as a top reliever for the national champions this year and is a hard hitting safety on the football team. It will be interesting to see what career path he follows. Jones is on record as saying that baseball is his favorite sport.

Congratulations to Chatham pitching coach Tyler Kincaid who has been named pitching coach at the University of San Diego. Kincaid had been at Palomar College. In another coaching move with ties to Chatham, ex-Baylor catcher Zach Dillon has been added to the staff at Iowa. Dillon played in Chatham in 2003 and 2004.

As of this weekend, we’re about one-third of the way from the start of last season to the start of the 2010 season. Hey, I’m reaching for something to make me feel good about the time between now and next June and saying it that way sounds better than saying we still have to wait 8 more months!

Does anyone have any news to pass along about improvements taking place at any of the Cape League fields? Any organizational news? Share it here with your fellow CodBallers.

At times I think I’m reading about the Cape Cod Baseball League. The main characters in The Road to Omaha (2009 St. Martin’s Press) are the main characters we all know and love from the Cape. Buster Posey, Gordon Beckham, Brett Wallace, Aaron Crow, Yonder Alonso, Jason Castro. The names are right out of my 2007 CCBL All-Star game posts.

If the Last Best League is the narrative of the Cape League. This is the narrative of the College World Series. It links college baseball history, Omaha, The Blatt, personalities and tournament drama into a smart and highly readable sports book.

In The Road to Omaha, author Ryan McGee focuses on the 2008, ten-day, eight-team College World Series. In ‘08 the unlikely Fresno State Bulldogs defeated the Georgia Bulldogs to become best of show. I still remember vividly watching the finals on ESPN.

The references to Fresno State’s assistant coach Mike Mayne are particulary fun for me since Mike’s son, former Major Leaguer Brent Mayne, is someone I’ve worked with on his baseball blog — The Art of Catching.

With so many stars of the Cape League playing with and against each other, McGee is compelled to let readers in on the fact that many of the best players in 2008 had gotten to know each other the summer before on the Cape.

He calls the Cape League the place where “the best college players get to play in the summertime. (Most end up humbled by having to trade in their aluminum bats for old-fashioned wood, but it hadn’t affected” Castro and Posey.

The 288-page chronicle of “hits, hopes and history at the college world series” is dense but but McGee is the kind of writer who knows how to weave personalities and personal stories throughout to keep it interesting.

A must read for all college baseball fans.