The Home Run Derby has now gotten so out of hand that a crappy post-grunge band, Alter Bridge, a derivative remnant of the highly derivative band Creed, will now perform at the Derby. I wonder if they'll be able to play each player's theme music as he steps to the plate.

And suddenly the Derby is an international event as if baseball had to fill the void left by the dormant NHL's non-existent All-Star game. There's Mark Teixeira representing the United States, Andruw Jones representing the Netherlands (though he's from Curacao), David Ortiz representing the Dominican Republic, Bobby Abreu representing Venezuela, Jason Bay representing Canada, Ivan Rodriguez representing Puerto Rico, and Carlos Lee for Panama. They are still trying to get the soft-hitting Ichiro to represent Japan. Buck Showalter claims oddly that Ichiro would win the whole shebang, perhaps as an attempt to evince the type of idiosyncratic idiocy that all true genius mangers have.

I have picked through the entire roster (and I'm Neyering out of doing so), but here are the most international All-Star games to date (I'm using "international" as a superlative as was once done on the website for a company in whose employ I once acted as a usufruct):

So this year's game has to be in the top handful. Given the roster shuffling that happens up until game time, I'll wait until Jeannie Zalasko's postgame to count my chickens, er, countries.