Anarchy

noun

an·ar·chy

\ˈa-nər-kē\







1. A situation of confusion and wild behavior in which the people in a country, group, organization, etc., are not controlled by rules or laws

2. The 2015 American League All-Star voting



KANSAS CITY, Mo. – In every corner of the Kansas City Royals' clubhouse, they revel in the chaos, each player's face contorted into something that resembles a Guy Fawkes mask. Somehow, the American League All-Star team's lineup as of today consists of eight Royals and the best player in the world, and this, to them, is the most glorious kind of anarchy, one everybody involved wants to believe is built on the back of pure passion.

View photos Royals second baseman Omar Infante is hitting .227 and could start the All-Star Game. (Getty Images) More

It may well be that the 25th-sized market of Major League Baseball's 26 mobilized, rocked the vote and did so without the help of a sneaky Python script or an undetectable Perl script or any of the ways around the system that for the first time has gone online only and seen itself turned completely on its head. Because right now, the single worst offensive player in baseball is the AL starter at second base and the single best offensive player in the AL is not starting and the entire thing is like a coastal fever dream in which the Midwest rises up and fights back for all those years of flyover jokes.

This is the comeuppance for all those years of trying to make the All-Star Game mean something, the cruel twist lobbed back at baseball for it marshaling out home-field advantage in the World Series – a real, tangible, legitimate, important thing – to the winner of an exhibition that by comparison makes spring-training games look serious. That the revolution germinated in Kansas City, for most of three decades a baseball wasteland, makes it all the more delicious.

Do not dare call this a travesty. It is a triumph of the people. And whether it's real people who are voting for the 35 allowed times from one email address and then creating another for 35 more and doing so ad nauseam, or a person taking the time and computer know-how to try and hoodwink MLB.com – the largest tech company in all of New York, run by brilliant minds who say they've rallied their collective nerdery to detect such things – this is an effort that, in truth, is mutually beneficial.

MLB loves this. Really. In the middle of the NBA Finals and the end run of the Stanley Cup playoffs, the public was talking about a baseball exhibition game that doesn't happen until the middle of July. TV debate shows were arguing over it and sports-talk radio was blathering on about it and MLB, which struggles for publicity like this, found a goldmine in a market of 2 million people who had mustered an unbelievable – literal and figurative – number of votes for its players.

Take, for example, first base. The Royals' Eric Hosmer is the best young first baseman in the league. He deserves consideration and may well make the team were he not a Royal. Because he is, he entered the week with 5,777,363 votes, nearly half a million more than Miguel Cabrera, who is threatening to win another Triple Crown and leads the AL in on-base and slugging percentages.

"If I'm Miguel Cabrera, I'm looking at myself like, 'Are you kidding me?' " Hosmer said. "Miguel is a candidate and should be the starter."

Hosmer doesn't say this to discourage Royals fans from voting for him. He loves it, and he would love to start the game. Ballot-box stuffing has its consequences, though, and one of those is the sense that the Royals are simply a function of a rabid fan base and not worthy of being in the discussion. Salvador Perez makes as good a case as Russell Martin or Stephen Vogt. Alcides Escobar is a perfectly fine choice in a bereft AL shortstop landscape. Mike Moustakas isn't Josh Donaldson, but he's right there with Manny Machado. Lorenzo Cain warrants a spot. Alex Gordon is a back-to-back All-Star having another excellent season.

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