Seattle, July 10, 2001

The All-Star game has long been one of Major League Baseball's marquee events. This game, which pits the top players (or most popular ones) from each league against each other, is always a crowd pleaser and television ratings-getter.

The announcers at this year's game spent a minute or two of airtime describing the international flavor of the game, featuring players from some surprisingly large number of countries--thirteen, I think. However, no matter how international we like to think the game is, the actions of MLB and Fox Sports demonstrate otherwise: both the Canadian and American national anthems were performed at Safeco Field, but the Canadian anthem was pre-empted by commercials while the American anthem was aired in its entirety.