Back in January, we shared with you a video introducing Minor League Baseball’s best (and possibly worst) idea ever: a Baseballtown All-Star Home Run Derby organized by the Reading Phillies to include a points-based obstacle course in the outfield, a party for fans in the infield dirt while the home run derby was happening and a jazz musician squatting and playing rockin’ acoustic guitar in front of home plate. I think we all assumed that between January and July, someone would go, “hey, let’s just do a normal home run derby and not kill anybody with baseballs”.

Thankfully, nobody said that. The Baseballtown Derby happened IN REAL LIFE earlier this month, and it’s almost as glorious as you imagined.

Highlights include pop-flies into the dinner party, a man with a baseball head and a monster’s body catching balls in the outfield and a guy on an ostrich getting pissed because he missed a line drive. Oh, and at one point a home run hits a dunk tank in the outfield and dunks a spectator. Who do we have to put in charge to get the MLB derby to look ANYTHING like this?

[via Reading Phillies on Facebook]

The Big Lead has done a lot for the online sports blogging community, but its finest work may be this clip of John Kruk eating ribs during last night’s Home Run Derby. In slow motion. With the Chariots Of Fire theme playing over it.

If you want to see it (and haven’t been dissuaded too severely by that screen grab of Kruk sucking on his middle finger), the video that exists for some reason is after the jump.

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The 2012 MLB Home Run Derby took place last night in Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium (the one with the fountains), and if you were like most people you had a passing interest, got bored, then spent a little time on Twitter trying to make Chris Berman’s incessant “BECK BECK BECK BECK BECK” thing funny. You have have compared him to a chicken. It happens.

In the event that you didn’t have seven hours to kill watching dudes congratulate themselves, we’ve collected all the important moments MLB.com would allow us without expressed written consent … that includes a pair of monster home runs, Robinson Cano getting a reaction that made Yankees fans break out their shame fingers and a Royals fan who gets greedy and nearly ends up drowned in the fountain. It was all the fun you’d expect from a home run derby, only it took seven hours.

Up first, here’s Robinson Cano getting his feelings hurt:

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It’s not really fair to say that a Minor League Baseball team with a performing, five-member mascot band and a hot dog vendor who is half ostrich has “lost” their mind, but it’s safe to say the Reading Phillies have been consistently out of it for years and the Baseballtown All-Star Home Run Derby is the next harrowing step of their descent into madness. Picture of me at a school desk in R-Phils Mascot Band bassist Bucky the Beaver’s home unrelated.

Anyway, Reading is either trying to make the concept of a home run derby as chaotic and dangerous as possible or throwing in with Mutant League Sports, you decide: they’ve put a dunk tank, a crane, a trampoline and a “gaff ball picker-upper” in the outfield affixed with any number of unfortunately-placed interns that will earn you “hundreds and hundreds of points” if you hit them. Believe it or not, a teenager hanging from a crane with a baseball glove trying to catch fly balls isn’t the worst idea: 500 fans are going to be IN THE INFIELD having a VIP party with food and drinks and crafts and what-the-hell-ever-else while the Eastern League All-Stars hit home runs over them. There’s a net, you see. A net I’m sure will keep pop-ups from reigning down on the head of some dude elbows deep in ribs, or onto any of the various fire-related or electrical equipment they’ve got set up.

And THAT’s not even the worst idea: Grammy award-winning jazz guitarist David Cullen will be sitting in front of home plate, playing guitar as guys hit home runs over him. Nothing says “sports fun” like a guy getting brain damage while trying to pluck his way through f**king Woodsongs, I guess.

If you’re in Reading on the 10th of July, go to this and send me a report. Try not to die from a fly ball to the dome between point A and point B.

[via Buzzfeed]

According to many people in the sports media and mostly Boston Red Sox fans, David “Big Papi” Ortiz is “back!” after having won last night’s 2010 MLB Home Run Derby. Ortiz hit 32 total home runs, but it was his impressive 11 in the final round against Hanley Ramirez’s dinky 5 that made Boston’s slugger the event’s champion. This, of course, is great news for the Red Sox offense, because Home Run Derby champions notoriously smack the tits off the ball in the second half of the season because opposing pitchers keep throwing batting practice pitches against them.

Dismissive wanking aside, there’s a metaphor wrapped inside of an analogy with Ortiz’s clobbering of Ramirez, and that is the American League’s complete dominance of the National League. The Senior Circuit has lost 12 of the last 13 All-Star Games to the AL, with that unlucky number 13 being the infamous Bud Selig tie game that has since led to the All-Star Game counting for home field advantage in the World Series. Don’t worry, Selig’s getting a statue in Milwaukee for his efforts.

Watch Big Papi talk about socking some dingers after the jump.

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MLB had their Home Run Derby last night, and unless you were one of the Boys and Girls Clubs getting a piece of that giant check on display at the end, it was absolutely pointless. Prince Fielder won an event with no real ebb and flow that was marred by too many guys getting batting-practice-quality pitches and taking them, sometimes several in a row.

It was irritating on several levels. Brandon Inge, who had no business being there, didn’t leave the yard once. and The rules didn’t make any sense, including the “five-swing” first-round tiebreaker. The players didn’t wear their caps, which is fine, because the league-specific caps were ugly. And the charitable promotions and energy drink product placements, each seemed to be more nauseating than the one before it.

But the biggest bust of the night was ESPN’s Ball Track, or as I called it last night, SpermBall. If you didn’t see it, it was a direct ripoff of FOX’s “glow puck” from the 1990s. It was one of those silly colorful CG things that hadn’t been totally debugged and, worse, added nothing to the telecast, which was beyond salvation. The silver lining of it all is that the All-Star Game is tonight, and it couldn’t possibly be worse than a Home Run Derby game that will need a serious overhaul before next summer.