HR Derby, All-Star Game ... Just-OK Options

It's Midsummer Classic time again, and that means a baseball game that's not what it once was supported by another over-hyped exhibition that remains back, back, back in the dark ages.

Sure, the Home Run Derby (8 p.m. Monday, ESPN) has changed -- with "team captains" picking the participants and some promised alterations this year. Those things are overdue, though, and it would be nice if they could work because the made-for-TV event has become too long and lost much of its cache in recent years.

Plus, there are only so many times before Chris Berman can offer "back, back, back" and it not be tiresome. (We will have reached that point before the first pitch this year.)

The made-for-TV derby should be good, but it has seemed to lumber along in recent years. Sponsor State Farm has provided some emotional and fun tie-ins at times. Those types of things -- with contest winners getting some big prize depending on the outcome of the contest -- have helped and made the event special at times.

Still, the derby needs help. Hopefully it'll come this year. If not, it'll just be more of the same -- the kind of TV event that baseball is lucky to have happen during the summer because it would be pummeled in the ratings were it to fall during the full-fledged TV season.

A mid-summer schedule has not really helped ratings for the derby (down 22 percent last year from the year before) or even the All-Star Game, though.

The game itself has been on a downward ratings trend for years -- hampered by the interleague schedule, players who skip the game, multiple pitching changes and the remaining vestiges of that silly tie years ago.

Sure, they're playing for something (home field advantage in the World Series for the winning league), but the All-Star Game (8 p.m. Tuesday, Fox) still seems a far cry from its heydey. Of course, that heydey came during the time of limited TV selections and, as an older fan, my memories are ties to seemingly wonderful incarnations of the exhibition in the 1970s and early 1980s.

In fairness, the game remains -- in many ways -- the best of any professional all-star contest. It's much better than what the NBA and NFL offer in terms of competition for their all-star games. Still, it just seems like it needs rescued from itself. It no longer seems special. Instead, it's just OK.