Sports Roundup by Various Sports Writers

By Nick Canepa

Here's hoping Marry Ramirez is voted into baseball's All-Star Game — or, as we pros like to say, "The Midsummer Classic." Here's hoping ManRam can crawl out from under his fertility drug-induced paternity leave and father the winning run that will give the National League pennant winner home-field advantage in the World Series.

It will be just what the game deserves. Baseball's All-Star Game, once so sexy they played two of them in the same year, should be abolished.

So should the NBA's, which has become a defenseless dunkfest now more known for its sideshows and police actions.

So should the NHL's, the worst use of ice since a loco bartender poured Scotch into root beer.

And, of course, the NFL's version, the Pro Bowl, which was a horrible idea when The League started it up in 1939. For next season at least, they've moved it out of Hawaii to Miami, but it will be held the Sunday before the Super Bowl instead of the week after it.

That makes sense. The Pro Bowl stinks and now the two teams playing for the world championship will have no representatives in it. These are supposed to be intelligent human beings in the NFL office, but every once in a while a brain flatulence pandemic hits 280 Park Avenue.

Abolitionists such as yours truly may not have a say, anyway, so let's return to The Manny Thing. Got to love The Manny Thing.

All that's been wrong with the All-Star Game since the players ceased caring about it (trace that back to when ultra-caring Pete Rose retired) — exacerbated by Commissioner Bud Selig's ludicrous notion to make the game "meaningful" by allowing the winning league to have the Series home-field advantage — is tied up in this revolting development.

On May 7, the Dodgers' Ramirez, caught with his hand in the female fertility drug jar, was suspended for 50 games, which means he can come back in early July, just in time for the All-Star Game.

Knowing baseball can do nothing to stop it, baseball blogger Jason Rosenberg, to show what a joke All-Star voting is, started a website, "Vote for Manny." It's a wonderful thing.

The latest National League tabulations have Ramirez fifth among outfielders, with 858,353 votes, behind the Phillies' Raul Ibanez (1,415,493), the Brewers'Ryan Braun (1,269,033), the Mets' Carlos Beltran (1,092,516) and the Cubs' Alfonso Soriano (1,078,904).

Manny, who played in 27 games before getting collared, is going to need one of those Silky Sullivan stretch runs to rank among the top three outfielders and make the team, but come on America.

We know you have it in you. There are all kinds of different ways to vote, so stuff those ballot boxes. You don't have to be from Florida.

No one has said, least of all Manny, that he will serve if elected. We haven't gotten anything out of him like Garry Templeton's classic All-Star line — "If I ain't startin', I ain't departin' " - but we do know Ramirez's manager, L.A.'s Joe Torre, is against it.

"No," Torre said. "I think if you asked Manny he'd give you the same answer.

"To me, I think the significance of the All-Star Game is to reward players who have had a good first half. We don't always do that, because it's a popularity vote, for the most part. If you want to include the fans, that's how it's got to be."

Well, Manny probably had a good first half of an inning in one of those 27 games. If fans are so important, it's a shame owners don't ask for paying customers' advice on how they'd like to see franchises spend their money and how much, but that's another story.

If Ramirez played in the NFL, he'd be ineligible. Remember the cry and the hue in 2006 when Chargers linebacker Shawne Merriman was voted into the Pro Bowl despite serving a four-game in-season suspension? Well, the League did something about it (no franchise in history has brought about more rules changes than the Chargers).

This paragraph now is included in the NFL Policy on Anabolic Steroids and Related Substances: "In addition to the suspension imposed on him, any player suspended for a violation of the Policy will be ineligible for selection to the Pro Bowl, or to receive any other honors or awards from the League or the NFL Players Association, for the season in which the violation is upheld (i.e., following any appeals) and in which the suspension is served)."

Hard to say the number of votes Ramirez has received is enough to rattle Selig and his cadre, but it should. Players suspended before the All-Star break should not be able to play in the game, and anyone suspended after it shouldn't be allowed to play in next year's event.

Maybe Manny's inclusion would jiggle the spineless. So get out and vote. It's your right as an American blogger and tweeter.

Nick Canepa writes about sports for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact him at nick.canepa@uniontrib.com.

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