Happy Home Run Derby Day!

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Another All-Star break commences with the Big Home Run Derby down at Target Field this evening. Chris Berman will be part of your evening if you want to watch the festivities, Lord only knows what kind of stupid catchphrases he’ll have for all of us as the evening progresses.

The derby really is a celebration of the season, tonight is for us fans. There’s really no money involved for the players. They’re doing it to entertain us. That’s the part of it that should be enjoyed.

I’ve got a lot of great derby memories as a kid – and this is definitely one of those baseball things that takes you back to being a kid. An evening of pure enjoyment awaits us, even if Berman is going to try to rain on the party by telling us that ‘Jose Bautista just hit one all the way to St. Paul!’.

Finally Giancarlo Stanton meets Derby. The competition will never be the same (he’s a 3/1 favorite to win the thing per Bovada with Yasiel Puig checking in at 5/1).

The All Star festivities can be kind of sad because the season is half over – I started thinking about NFL and my fantasy football team for the first time last night – but we don’t have to get into all that until tomorrow. I’ll enjoy today and tonight, though I do miss Baseball Tonight at the All Star Gala; here is the only proof on the internet that the neat two hour special after the Home Run Derby existed. It served as a great fireside chat for Karl Ravech, old school Peter Gammons and the other talking heads and really set the scene for all-things second half in the game. It’s another reason ESPN sucks nowadays.