When the All-Star Game arrives in baseball each year, there are always a number of players, managers and fans who feel as though there were some mistakes in selecting the NL and AL rosters. Very rarely do we hear a player who was on the bubble admit that they did not deserve on All-Star spot, but Brandon Phillips broke the mold over the weekend. Dusty Baker and a number of fans feel that Phillips was overlooked by Tony La Russa. Not Brandon.
“I felt like I didn’t deserve to be an All-Star anyway,” Phillips told Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports on Saturday. I feel like if I did my job on the field, I would have been an All-Star,” Phillips said. “I don’t worry about what happened with the La Russa situation, I feel like I shouldn’t have been an All-Star in the first place. My job is to go out there and play the best baseball possible. The only ones I have to really get mad at are my fans voting — if they really wanted me there, they would’ve voted for me.”
Since Phillips is big on Twitter and says it has helped his career, you can understand why he’s disappointed he didn’t make the cut. A number of people felt as though La Russa left both Phillips and Johnny Cueto off the NL roster intentionally. Phillips may have admitted he didn’t deserve a spot, but he also said it bothered him earlier in July when the rosters were announced.
“I let it get to me on the whole California trip,” he said of Cincinnati’s 11-game road trip before the break. “I was struggling, I was like, ‘why am I not an All-Star, why am I not an All-Star?'”
Good for him for sleeping on it and talking about it rationally rather than coming out and crying like some other players who felt they were snubbed.
H/T Eye on Baseball
Photo credit: Charles LeClaire-US PRESSWIRE
