The Greatest Show on Earth... during the All Star Break

I remember as a child loving the All Star game. As a young child - not yet jaded by eighteen seasons of miserable (present season excluded, thank G-d) losing baseball served up by the Pittsburgh Pirates - I collected the cards, played the video games, played stick ball and most of all loved watching the game of baseball.

The All Star game meant a bit to me as a young one because I never got to see the American League. The first nine years of my life were as a Mets fan and the past twenty has me a follower of the hapless-since-Sid-Bream-ruined-our-dreams Buccos. There weren't a ton of them playing and you got to see larger than life match ups of my favorite players.

Nowadays the game itself has a lost a lot of meaning. You can blame it on a number of factors including interleague play, the sheer number of players selected, the approach the managers take to it, the availability of so many games you just didn't have in the 80s.

But watching the home run derby and Prince Fielder just a moment ago continue to swing away when the first round swing off was done, just to see if he could hit five homers with only five swings (and he did it), it reminded me that this may be the most fun moment of the game. The game, for all the MLB hypes it, really counts for nothing. Yes, I know! The winning team gets home field advantage in the World Series. But at its heart, the game is an exhibition put on for fans to just have fun and see guys they would never see paired up or against each other for one day.

Home Run Derby is fun. Even Chris Berman and the way he commentates the action is all about fun. Can you honestly imagine Joe Buck calling the Home Run derby? Really?

In 1994, the Pirates were only at year 2 of 18. They hosted the All Star game. Ken Griffey Jr. baseball also came out that year for SNES. I can't say if it was the first or not, but it had a unique feature. Home Run Derby. I remember playing it at All Star Fanfest and friends would come over to play one another. We'd compete to see which made up player - who needs player licensing anyways?!? - could smack the most.

The ground rules before any Home Run Derby challenge were simple. No Ken Griffey Jr.

I always picked a huge muscular guy that was a blatant rip off of Frank Thomas.

No One Wants to Be Dazzler

I recently bought X-Men the Arcade game for the Xbox out of nostalgia for what I could only categorize as the greatest arcade game ever made. I dare say most men between the ages of 25-35 would share my enthusiasm and agree that there was not a better game to drop some quarters into at the local arcade.

It's not that the X-Men arcade game was the greatest arcade game ever designed. Wrestlefest holds a special spot in my heart, while others loved games like Area 51 or Time Crisis. No... while the game was fun to play, the graphics were great for their time and it was relatively simple to play, that's not what made it amazing.

What separated it from other stops in the arcade was that six people could play at one time. There were huge two screens for this one game! Sure, there was a smaller version with four control stations but it just wasn't the same. Better yet, on the six-person console, each station was an assigned character. If you were standing at the left-most station, you were the boy scout, Cyclops. You couldn't be anyone else.

And with that memory, I recall another one. No one wanted to be at the controls furthest to the right...

Dazzler.

Who the hell was Dazzler anyway? If you were a young pre-teen boy like me all you knew was she was not cool enough to be in the Fox Saturday morning cartoon and that said it all. Granted, neither was Nightcrawler, but he looked so awesome and you could do wicked jump kicks, so who cared!

Dazzler also didn't appeal to the older games either. If you were the guy who wanted to be the hot chick you picked Storm. Look at the outfits and there is no comparison! Storm looks like at her tamest she's playing to a burlesque house.

On the other hand, Dazzler wore full body "tights," an open member's only jacket and lesbian haircut.

I find it ironic, that after what has to be at least ten years since I last played this game, I found myself in a game of six where I had no choice.

I was Dazzler.

And as I sat there, ignoring my wife and son, doing weird acrobatic moves as I through sentinels across the screen and occasionally threw some form of exploding bubblegum at enemies I could only think of one thing...

Nobody moves the blob.