World Continues to Spin After Ichiro Misses All-Star Game

I was watching a show on the History Channel this weekend. You know, those shows with a bunch of mind-blowing scientific things we can’t wrap our feeble minds around.

Okay, I won’t speak on your behalf of your intelligence. You might be a scientist. Myself, though, I can’t figure out how we've figured out how to measure energy coming out of a rock to determine how long ago a meteor struck the ground near it.

That’s wacko, my friends.

So this show was about climate changes over the history of earth. How, in some huge number of years, a few more ice ages will happen, continents will collide, humans might be wiped out and perhaps some new form of intelligent life will dig up the remains of sky scrapers and highways. And here you thought we hit the jackpot finding Pompeii.

I guess the point I’m trying to get to is that time goes on without stuff. Rome fell, the Samurai were eliminated and the Dodo became extinct.

There’s likely to come a day where oceans dry up or the sun explodes and Earth vaporizes, rendering its history lost and forgotten. That time did not come after last night’s exhibition when Ichiro missed the All-Star game for the first time in his career.

Also missing was his now infamous pre-game speech. After the American League manager concludes his team meeting, the normally silent Ichiro would burst out from his locker and go on a profanity-laced tirade. He’d tell his teammates how lousy the National League is and how victory would soon be theirs.

This is one of those things us outsiders will never be able to experience. Even if I had a million bucks, I couldn't buy a ticket to the event. No player has recorded it, or at least not recorded it and left it somewhere for a clubhouse attendant to snag and upload to Youtube.

Perhaps I shouldn't compare this to things like dinosaurs and Jesus walking the planet in human form. It’s entirely possible that Ichiro will once again be an All-Star before his career is done.

At 37 years of age now, though, and decline finally showing its ugly face to one of the more consistent players in history, it’s also entirely possible that this amazing performance has gone the way of the Darling Downs Hopping Mouse.

With most of us having never been afforded the opportunity to see it.