MLB saves some trees

I still have a few of these hanging around the house.

MLB has decided to eliminate the paper ballots available at ballparks (and retail outlets? Have they still been doing that over the past few years?) and have fans vote for their favorite All Stars via electronic devices.

Perhaps they were worried about hanging chads? Who knows?

Of course, the one-person, one-vote concept was never a thing when it came to the All-Star Game. In 1957, several members of the Cincinnati Reds were voted onto the National league squad with accusations of shenanigans flying all over the place.

I usually don’t like to use Wikipedia as a source, but I think they have it pretty well covered:

Cincinnati Redlegs voting controversy

When fan voting to determine the game’s starters was completed, seven Cincinnati Redlegs players (Ed Bailey, Johnny Temple, Roy McMillan, Don Hoak, Frank Robinson, Gus Bell and Wally Post) had been elected to start in the All-Star Game; the only non-Redleg elected to start for the National League was St. Louis Cardinal first baseman Stan Musial. Most baseball observers agreed that while the Redlegs were known to be a great offensive team with many outstanding position players, they did not deserve seven starters in the All-Star Game.

An investigation launched by Commissioner Ford Frick found that over half of the ballots cast came from Cincinnati, with the Cincinnati Enquirer printing up pre-marked ballots and distributing them with the Sunday edition of the newspaper to make it easy for Redlegs fans to vote often for their favorite players, while stories emerged of bars in Cincinnati refusing to serve alcohol to customers until they filled out a ballot.

Frick appointed Willie Mays of the New York Giants and Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves to substitute for Bell and Post, and to strip the fans of their voting rights; Bell was kept as a reserve, while Post was injured and would have been unable to play in any event. Managers, players, and coaches picked the entire team until 1970, when the vote again returned to the fans, and to avoid a repeat of this incident, MLB officials evenly distributed the 26 million ballots to 75,000 retail outlets and 150 minor and major league stadiums, while a special panel was also created to review the voting.

The franchise was called the “Redlegs” for a few years because, you know, communists.

The new method was the subject of a Pardon the Interruption segment, in which cohost Michael Wilbon came on perhaps a bit too strong about the demographic of those who would sit around the computer in their mothers’ basements and pump out vote after vote, in effect stuffing the virtual ballot box.

And here’s another take, by ESPN.

I’m all for greening things up, but still, it’s kind of sad. Bye-bye, ballots.