All major sports select all star teams using fan voting with different systems. The NBA, major league baseball and the NHL all let the fans vote for the starters and the coach selects the rest of the squad. Thats all good and dandy until people get screwed. OVer 50 percent of the time they are wrong with the starters.

      In the NFL they do it right by balancing player, fan, and sports writer voting. I like it because the right people get chosen. They don't usually play but the right players are selected. There are all those contract cry babies that have a sore back or something. Baseball especially should use this system for appointing a starting lineup.

      They are half way there. they have the players voting and the fans get the starters. Well fan shouldn't count as much as players right so lets make it that way. I propose a 75/25 system. The players get the top and the fans the boot. The players got it right again as usual but not the fans of course not.

      The problems with fan voting are simple. First they look to see familiar faces and names who made last year and the year before that without looking at the numbers. It's not brain science just look at their batting average abd home run total plese. Then there is online voting which was a good idea until the Japanese screwed that up. Well the brilliant people at MLB decided to put the ballot in Japanese and Spanish so that those countries can celebrate their national heroes screwing up the ballot. Anyway I think you should have to fit criteria to vote for All Stars. They should have to speak English and pass a baseball competancy test in my opinion. 

 

Kevin J. Grande