See, THIS is the crap that happens when police interfere:
Hit and run driver nearly killed by wrathful mob.

And now, for today's essay: Barry Zito rocks my world.

Let's face it, the guy is a product of a minor-league system (see my second post ever) that knows what it's doing, and now he's in the majors, selected to be an All-Star for the second straight year in his two-year career.

And then he gets screwed by the Roger Clemens lobby.

Now, don't get me wrong, Roger Clemens is definitely one of the best pitchers that Major League Baseball has seen over the last 50 years, no doubt. I mean, he's no Babe Ruth (who, it should be pointed out, holds the record for best career winning percentage as a pitcher against the damn Yankees). But he's good. You have to be to get 300 wins, and 4,000 strikeouts, all in one lifetime. Hell, Mark Mulder probably won't do that. Neither will Mark Prior. Or Byung-Hyun Kim. Or me.

But that doesn't mean it's time to undermine the All-Star selection process quite yet. Roger Clemens, you see, was not selected to be an All-Star this year. It's his last season, and he hasn't really performed up to usual Roger standards. So the AL manager didn't think that he deserved to be a pitcher in the Midsummer Classic. Neither did the players, when they voted in a few reps from each of the leagues. No, Roger was probably going to spend the next three days tending chickens, or whatever the hell it is he does on his big freaking Texas ranch. Well, tending chickens and watching game film on his next opponent.

Barry Zito, however, was selected to be an All-Star, by the team managers. So he was actually in a news conference last night, meeting with some folks who wanted to talk to him about playing in tomorrow's All-Star game. Then he comes out, and gets pulled aside by Sandy Alderson (who is not human), Ken Macha, Oakland's manager, and Billy Beane, the Athletics' version of God, and gets told what Bud Selig has just done on the Dan Patrick show.

And then Barry Zito isn't an All-Star any more. Some sort of back-room deal was cut, drawing straws representing pitchers who had played in the last, oh, 7 decades, and Zito was cut from the All-Star team to make room for the Rocket.

Normally, I'm a fan of dirty dealings. They are what made America what it is today. We wouldn't actually have a Bill of Rights if it hadn't been for a low-key meeting between a wannabe Congressman and a bunch of Baptists in Virginia. So they're generally OK. But that's one thing if they don't usurp the process. Mike Scioscia thinks he should have been an All-Star, dammit, and Barry Zito ought to be playing in tomorrow's game.

But when Bud Selig gets involved, that's the end of it all. The guy, honestly, has about one quarter of one wit about him, so it may not take him long to gather them, but it also doesn't take him long to do something so phenomenally stupid that it shakes the very foundations on which we stand. Last year, rather than changing the rules for the All-Star Game (sweet Jesus, Bud, you are the fucking COMMISSIONER OF BASEBALL. IT IS NOT THAT HARD TO CHANGE THE RULES IN A GAME THAT DOES NOT COUNT), he says, "Screw it, it's a tie. Now, does this taste great, or is it less filling?"

This year, the commissioner's office releases a statement that says, "Barry Zito is unable to pitch."

What? Says who? Barry?

For his part, Zito says he's "puzzled," and I don't really blame him. If the Dalai Lama came into Chicago tomorrow and said, "I can discover true peace if you let me mow down a couple of National Leaguers," then fine. That's a situation that calls for a statement and an action out of the office of the Commissioner. But Roger Clemens is not His Holiness. More to the point, Roger is not even a particularly nice guy. He's just a pitcher on the tail end of his career who couldn't win in Chicago when it counted. I can't comprehend replacing an up-and-comer with him.

Barry Zito has to live with this for the rest of his life - getting removed from an All-Star team for no good reason. And he's only 25. He says he thought that maybe it was because he pitched yesterday, and Macha and Beane didn't want to wear him out for a game that really doesn't count, no matter how much Fox says it does. He retired one batter last year, and I don't think it will kill his arm to do that again.

So what it boils down to is this: the Commissioner of Baseball is a knob. He decided to cut a deal with the Athletics that allows one of the all-time greats in the twilight of his career to play in the last All-Star Game he'd ever get a chance to play in, and he does it in all the wrong ways. Oh, Bart Giamatti, where are you now?