They say there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. Allow me to add a third: sportswriters' annual carping about the players chosen for Major League Baseball's All-Star game by the "ignorant fans."

Only hours after the teams were named, there is already the predictable flurry of columns (including this, this, and this), chiding the fans because their benighted choices do not accord with the great wisdom of sportswriters who, after all, really know the game. They talk about the "mistakes" that the fans made in voting. This gives them a reason to think of themselves as an elite group which is able to see the dunce fans for what they are, rather than to think of themselves as drunk, overweight slobs, which is what they really are.

What they don't understand is that the All-Star game may be the one thing in all of God-forsaken baseballdom that the game actually does right (except, of course, when its moronic commissioner decides to allow the game to end in a tie so that no players have to get tired). In a game that has largely left its fans behind (as proven by the horrendous attendance figures and television ratings), there is still one place where Major League Baseball actually gives off the appearance of something less than disdain for its fans: the selection of the starting All-Star rosters.

The sportswriters fail to understand one thing: there is no set criteria for All-Star voting. Thus, the fans' supposed "mistakes" are not mistakes at all. You can't make a mistake without a standard of correctness in place. The assumption that sportswriters operate on is that the All-Star teams are supposed to be exclusively composed of players who are having the best year. But their fundamental assumption is flawed. That's not what the teams are supposed to be made up of. The All-Star teams are supposed to be made up of the players that the fans most want to see. That's the way the system is designed, and it works every time--the starting lineups are always made up of the players the fans most want to see.

Yet every year, one columnist after another whines about how Harvey Tobaccojuice really deserved to be on the All-Star team but was aced out simply because the fans have no earthly idea who he is. Well excuse me, but what exactly would be the point of playing an exhibition game with players that the fans have never heard of?

These were largely the same chuckleheads who twenty years ago were writing about what robbery it was that Mike Schmidt was elected to the All-Star team when those "in the know" recognized that Terry Pendleton was having a superior year. Well you know what? Mike Schmidt is in the Hall of Fame now, and there's not one single person in the universe (aside from Terry Pendleton) who now thinks "Man, I wish I had seen Terry Pendleton instead." Who cares if Ozzie Smith wasn't the best shortstop in the National League in a particular year? Would anyone really have cared to see Royce Clayton in his place?

So the sports writers can carp all they want about how the All-Star game is really just a "popularity contest." I say, Amen to that! It's about time Major League Baseball tried to do something popular with its own fans.