A much better All-Star Game than the Pro Bowl

In the morning of Saturday, September 14th, TUC is hosting the Scally's Cup All-Star Challenge at BMO Field.  Hopefully this All-Star game will be better than the major pro sports' games (because it's entirely realistic to compare a local flatball league to professional sports...).  

Here are my current rankings:

4)  Football - For football players, the Pro Bowl is a bonus cheque and a free trip to Hawaii for the family.  If not for those two things, no one would ever go, and it shows in the game.

3)  Basketball - Even with the Slam Dunk Contest enjoying a bit of a creative renaissance, the game itself is horr-awful (to borrow Shaq's phrase).  It's basically a showcase for hoisting up 3's, loads of turnovers, and practicing alley-oops while the defense watches (or moves out of the way).  

2)  Hockey - A lot of what makes hockey exciting (the speed, intensity and body-checking) is lost in this glorified game of shinny.  At least the goalies are trying to keep the score respectable, even if that is like Big Fish trying to cover Joel, Tien, Bonnie or Christian in the endzone; scoring is inevitable.  But at least the NHL ASG gave us Owen Nolan vs Dominik Hasek:

1) Baseball - How sad is it that the best All-Star Game is the one that felt the need to justify itself as "counting" for home-field advantage in the World Series?  But at least the players actually do try, whereas in the other leagues they are just going through the motions.  But MLB, don't push some contrived notion to make the game seem more important than it really is.

So, the Scally's Cup doesn't have to give us much to be the best All-Star Game around.  I just hope it's taken seriously, unlike the one at Gender Blender.  The GB game is definitely a different monster though, so I have high hopes it won't be like that.

Players will be chosen based on nominations.  Hopefully our 10-2-1 record will translate into a couple of players selected.  But we need to do our part, and should suggest some worthy candidates.  Some people who I was thinking of are:

Yoink - Adrian, Ryan, Sarah

4D - Chee, Matt

Disc Horde - Shimmy, Dan, Maria

5E - I think his name is Sachin

Ventura Wu - Sue

Mandrew - sorry, you need to show up to more than 1 out of 3 games

Any thoughts on who we should/should not nominate?