Where Are the Stars?

The All-Star Game will highlight that it’s a really weird time in baseball.

OK, get ready for some serious old-man-cloud screaming… because, hey, it’s time for the MLB All-Star Game, and if you can’t be gratingly nostalgic and gripe about how baseball’s All-Star Game used to be so much better, what’s even the point?

But, I really don’t mean this as a complaint. The truth is: I’m curious about the particular moment baseball is in right now. Look, here was the National League All-Star lineup the year I was born, in 1967:

1. Lou Brock, LF

2. Roberto Clemente, RF

3. Henry Aaron, CF

4. Orlando Cepeda, 1B

5. Dick Allen, 3B

6. Joe Torre, C

7. Bill Mazeroski, 2B

8. Gene Alley, SS

9. Juan Marichal, P

OK? Got that. Seven Hall of Famers. One should-be Hall of Famer in Dick Allen. This is a lineup filled with players who were not only great, but memorably great; you merely need to see the name Clemente or Aaron or Brock or Marichal and you are filled with the joy of baseball.

You probably know where this is going. But before we get there, here was the National League lineup when I was 25, in 1992: