MLB Cincinnati

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: Nate McLouth over Jason Bay- It's not that McLouth isn't a deserving All-Star, because he is. The problem is that he's mired in a terrible slump, putting up a .209/.258/.355 line with two homers over the last month or so (prior to today's game). There's a decent chance that by the end of the year, McLouth will have faded completely. Still, he made the team over Jason Bay, who's already a two-time All-Star and is slugging along like he has every year of his career besides an injury-filled 2007. It should take more than a flash in the pan to make an All-Star team.

Grievance: Miguel Tejada? Really?- After a down year in Baltimore last year, Tejada got off to a decent start this year. That's all quickly gone to hell, as he's hitting .198 since May 30th. Tejada's not an All-Star, he's a guy in the twilight of his career that Ed Wade is going to regret trading for by the end of the season.

Grievance: Adam Dunn isn't even a snub- I get that Dunn's only hitting .228. Aren't we to the point of enlightened fanhood that people can look beyond that and realize that his .895 OPS makes him a snub?

Grievance: Alfonso Soriano and Kosuke Fukudome are starters- Fan voting is stupid and unreliable. We say that every year. This year, these two are the reason.

Other snubs: Carlos Lee (unless he wins the final vote but let's be honest, dude's got no chance against David Wright).

When I'm at the ballpark, I generally have three things on my mind; baseball, beer, and food (and usually in that order). One thing I don't have in mind is whether or not there's a Revolutionary War soldier potentially buried under the field. This is, apparently, a miscalculation on my part because a man named Ken McCracken has managed to track down the burial site of his great-great-great-great-great uncle and it may be somewhere deep under the southwest corner of Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati.

The Cincinnati Enquirer article I've linked to is full of facts, but the most interesting one is that Capt. William McCracken Jr. may have been the last fatality of the Revolutionary War. Think about that for a second: the last soldier killed in the Revolutionary War is buried under Great American Ballpark. As if life wasn't full of enough little ironies, apparently death is, too.

Now, far be it from me to make light of a veteran on 4th of July weekend (that means a joke is coming), but I find this whole thing just a little bit creepy. OK, a lot bit creepy. And given the Reds' history at Great American (they're on their way to their sixth straight losing season there in six tries), maybe they should be looking into hiring Peter Venkman as manager when Dusty Baker wears out his welcome.

Ken Griffey Jr. arrived to the park last night thinking he was going to play, and when he saw the lineup card without his name on it, he grilled Dusty Baker's nine-year-old son Darren why his dad wasn't playing him. One kidney shot to the ego later, Griffey probably wished he kept his mouth shut. From Hal McCoy of the Dayton Daily News:

"Why am I not playing tonight, Darren?" asked Griffey.

"Because you can't hit lefthanders," said Darren, son of manager Dusty Baker. "And you're old."

"How old am I?"

"Fifty."

Ouch. Technically Junior is 38, he just stays healthy like a 50 year old. But Darren was right about the lefties: Griffey is hitting just .200 (17-for-85) against them this year. Griffey did redeem himself by hitting a walk-off home run (ahem, off right-hander Matt Capps) after coming into the ninth as a defensive replacement, but Darren's quick wit before the game makes you wonder if Dusty is letting the youngster have some input on the lineup.

Of course, if a nine-year-old is making calls in the dugout, it might also explain why one of the team's biggest bats was trying to bunt with two runners on and no outs in the eighth inning.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing matchups

Chicago Cubs (49-30) vs. Chicago White Sox (43-35) - 4:05 PM ET

The final weekend of interleague play for the season kicks off in the Bronx at 2 but the most meaningful game is in Chicago. The two Chicago clubs are in first, just as they were last week, but the White Sox can't afford another sweep at the hands of their crosstown rivals. The Twins are hard on their tail, a half-game back as play begins today, and there's that whole bragging rights thing to worry about too.

They'll need to do a better job against Ryan Dempster (9-2, 2.63) this time around. He held the Sox to one run in eight innings to win Sunday's finale at Wrigley Field. Dempster's won his last four decisions in what's turned out to be a very successful conversion from bullpen to rotation. They'll also need a better outing from their own starter. Jose Contreras (6-6, 3.96) got thrashed for 10 hits and nine runs in three and a third innings.

Just when you thought the J.P. Ricciardi-Adam Dunn feud was dead -- after Dunn made his cruel comments about Canadians and Dunn ignored Ricciardi's apology, it should have been -- it just keeps getting better. Ricciardi said he was reached by Dunn and smoothed things over. Dunn says he never talked to the Jays' GM:

Found in the clubhouse tunnel on the visitor's side of the field, Dunn was emphatic that he never called Ricciardi and that the two haven't spoken. "What? Not true. One million percent," Dunn told MLB.com after being informed of Ricciardi's comments. When told of what Dunn said, Ricciardi was adamant that he spoke to the player on the phone. "All I know is the person I talked to said it was Adam Dunn," Ricciardi said. "That's quite a prank to pull."

Not only is Adam Dunn hilarious (and insensitive to Canadians), he is now pulling prank phone calls. Or having Dusty Baker do it for him.

With the whole J.P. Ricciardi/Adam Dunn incident (hopefully) behind us, one would assume that it's now time for the Reds to move on and focus on building a good team around their young core that has some impressive talent. So of course, someone asked GM Walt Jocketty what he thought of Dunn as a baseball player and Jocketty offered some rather bland praise for his player:

Asked Monday what he thought of Dunn as a player, Reds GM Walt Jocketty said: "I'd rather not comment. You look at his run production. But it's not my position to give a scouting report on him. I like him as a player. He's someone we're going to have to decide on. He's still young, so that's not a factor."

One would assume Jocketty would be praising the guy he's hoping to trade and maybe taking a shot at Riccardi for talking about players that aren't even on his team. Instead, we get a no comment followed by an "I like him" as an afterthought. The only decision Jocketty's making on Dunn is whether he should trade him at the deadline in July or offer him arbitration and pick up the draft picks when he signs somewhere else.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Cincinnati Reds (35-41) at New York Yankees (40-35) - 1:05 PM ET

A friend of mine ... a Yankee fan no less ... said to me on Friday afternoon that he fully expected the Reds to win two out of three in this series in the Bronx against his Yankees. A pretty amazing statement from a fan of a team who had just won seven in a row. That's how impressed he was of the young pitching the Reds had. Although I think he expected the two wins to be against Edinson Vólquez on Friday, and Johnny Cueto today, and not against minor league call-up Daryl Thompson on Saturday. Instead, the Reds have a chance to sweep the Yankees in the Bronx (just like the Series in '76), ensuring that the Yankees last win over the Reds at Yankee Stadium will forever be Game 1 of the 1961 World Series, before The House That Ruth Built (and The House That Griffey Hates) comes down for good.

It's a slow Saturday afternoon and you know what that means: it's time for an update on everyone's favorite baseball soap opra: As the Dunn Turns. When we last left our characters, J.P. Ricciardi said he was very sorry for saying out loud that he thought Adam Dunn sucked. Adam Dunn, however, wanted nothing to do with Riccardi's apology.

"He apologized to me, the organization," Jocketty said. "He wanted to talk to Dunn. I don't think Dunn wanted to talk to him."

[...]

"I'll probably see him in Toronto (next week)," Dunn said. "Sorry doesn't fix it. He wasn't talking about baseball. Say I stink all you want. I'm OK with that. He was criticizing me as a person."

Now, Riccardi was clearly out of line here. And I've already said that I thought that his apology left a lot to be desired. The one thing that kind of sticks with me, though, is that stuff like this gets said about Adam Dunn all the time. Now maybe it happens because he's a huge guy that plays the outfield like a moose on rollerskates and only bats .240 or .250 every year, or maybe it happens because there's actually something to it. Honestly, I don' t know. It's just something that's worth noting.

Perhaps with three managers and a GM getting the axe in one week, JP Ricciardi feels a little bit of heat. He probably should because barring a miraculous second half, he's probably going to be looking for a new job come October. Whatever the reason, he's rethought his stance on Adam Dunn just a bit and decided to apologize to the Reds' slugger today.

"It's my fault, I take full responsibility for it," Ricciardi told The Globe and Mail newspaper of Toronto on Thursday. "I tried to get Adam's phone number from the Reds ... and if he wants to talk to me, I'll talk to him and apologize personally. But I apologize to him and the Reds. I need to be better than that. I let my guard down".

I love that the apology is, "I need to be better than that," and not, "I was wrong." So, basically what JP is saying is, "I still think you suck, but I shouldn't have said it out loud." Now that Ricciardi's put all this behind him, he can help focus on what's really important: hiring retread managers and trading for awful relievers that were probably about to be released anyways.

It's OK to like Adam Dunn. Really. Not just because he's good at baseball, though he is. If you need another reason, like him because he's often unfairly maligned by old-media types for his low batting average despite all the inherent flaws in the stat. Dunn produces, but he doesn't get much of the credit. Like him anyway.

J.P. Ricciardi, as you might have heard, does not. Dunn was asked to respond to Ricciardi's needlessly harsh comments, and (via Big League Stew) Dunn was, well, you'll see:

I've said it all along, it doesn't bother me what people say or think, especially someone outside of the organization who has no idea of anything that goes on here. He's not even in our country. This guy's in another country talking ****. [...] He doesn't even know me. If he knew me, fine. Say what you want. But this guy doesn't know anything about me other than what he sees on whatever SportsCenter they have on up there. That's it. [...] I don't care about the perception people have of me, if anything happens, it looks like I ain't going to Toronto. I can eliminate one team. I'm not converting my dollars into looneys [sic] and twoneys just yet. They're really good, actually.

Canadaphobia ... check. Deriding someone for only watching SportsCenter* ... check. Reference to hilariously named Canadian currency ... yep. It's official. This is the perfect soundbite. Adam Dunn wins.

*Though, in Canada, isn't SportsCenter called something different? It's like Sports Night or something, right?