DATE: Monday, July 7, 1997                  TAG: 9707070164

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Bob Molinaro 
                                            LENGTH:   63 lines

SO, CAN'T GET EXCITED OVER ALL-STARS? KICK YOUR TV

Interleague play hasn't taken the luster off baseball's All-Star Game.

Television is the culprit.

A story in Sunday's paper questioned whether the introduction of interleague play has robbed Tuesday's All-Star Game of some of its allure.

This assumes most of the sheen isn't already off the game. Those nightly all-you-can-eat major-league buffets served up by the cable networks - dessert comes with the daily highlight shows - offer Americans a feast of baseball from both leagues.

Any seamhead capable of paying his cable bill can pig out on both National and American league stars. Also, with free-agency, last season's NL All-Star sometimes is this season's AL All-Star, and vice versa. But mostly, it is cable overload that is hurting the All-Star Game.

Baseball is cable; cable baseball. A few weeks ago, a fan who doesn't choose to pay for cable in his home complained to me that baseball is the only big-league game that does not broadcast regularly on the over-the-air networks.

For the millions of Americans for whom cable games are but a rumor, the National Pastime gets less television exposure than the WNBA.

As for the current impact of the All-Star Game, I'm not the one to ask. Better to query a 12-year-old. Adolescents should make up the core audience for this year's game, as they did for All-Star Games of 30 and more years ago.

In the '60s, a 12-year-old and his friends would cluster around a TV set to watch the All-Star Game, equipped with a pitcher of Kool-Aid and a huge bowl of M&Ms (in honor of Mantle and Maris).

Because they grew up in an American League city, watching only AL games on the family Zenith, the kids waited eagerly for a glimpse of Willie Mays swinging, Maury Wills stealing, and Juan Marichal throwing to home with that exaggerated leg kick of his.

To these kids, the National Leaguers seemed exotic and distant. The mystery of the NL could not be unlocked simply through boxscores.

With today's nightly highlight orgies, can the All-Star Game mean what it once did? It would seem not. But confirm this with a 12-year-old fan of your choice.

For some of us former 12-year-olds, differences between the two leagues once seemed more pronounced. Today, whatever differences exist are linked less to personalities than to prejudices.

The American is the league of the much-denounced designated hitter and the cozy home run palace. The National is the league of the big, sterile stadium and AstroTurf.

But in the second-half of the '97 season, the AL is more likely to serve up the best stories. The Braves are the NL's only legitimately interesting team, while the AL still offers promise of a run at the first-place Orioles by the defending champion Yankees.

The most riveting AL race, though, involves Ken Griffey and Mark McGwire. Griffey is the most likely big-leaguer to hit the ball out of the park. McGwire is most likely to hit the ball out of Yellowstone National Park. The two of them will be battling one another and the ghost of Roger Maris.

Compared with what may still await fans, the All-Star Game is an innocuous interlude, albeit one that the cable networks - ESPN, CNN, et al. - will hype to the heavens.

There is irony here, Yogi. For to the extent that the splendor of a once-special event has been dulled, cable TV, with its saturation coverage of baseball, is to blame.

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