MLB's All-Star Game Is for the Fans—at Least According to the Media

(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

The biggest hole in this argument is team popularity. While the Red Sox are a more popular team and would therefore have more of their players receive votes, it would also seem that the Pirates' smaller fanbase hindered Bay's rise to "stardom."

Tony Kornheiser stated it perfectly in 2006 on Pardon the Interruption, when he claimed, "They put other stuff on, and it doesn't rate like the Yanks and the Sox. You put the Yanks and Sox on—it's magic! It's magic!"

In closing, while most fans obviously have the capacity to think for themselves, and ESPN and Fox Saturday Baseball are going to show the more popular teams (or teams with winning records), there is still influence being exerted by those in control of what comes through our digital connections. Sometimes it is even a personal bias.

On July 21, 2005, ESPN ran a behind-the-scenes episode of SportsCenter. During an interview with a producer on the topic of "killed" highlights, the producer noted that the Boston Red Sox versus Chicago White Sox highlights ran long (two minutes and 40 seconds, to be exact). 

It was then that the producer, who is from the Northeast, admitted a Red Sox bias.

Why is that not surprising?

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