Hats off to Bobby Abreu for absolutely crushing the home run derby records last night. He hit an unprecedented 24 in the first round. That shattered Miguel Tejada's record of 15 for a round, and almost broke the derby record of 27 (also held by Tejada). He went on to finish of Pudge and hit 41 total home runs before the night was over.

I was a little upset about one thing though: the new entry for the home run derby. Apparently you don't even have to be in the top 4 in your league to enter anymore. You just have to be the best home run hitter in your home country. This really screws a lot of good home run hitters out of participating in one of the most fun events to watch during the year.

Example: Hee-Seop Choi was selected to hit for Korea. Here's a guy who is horrible at hitting home runs. Abreu's 41 for the night were 3 more than Choi has hit in his whole career.

Then you have guys like Jason Bay who are taking spots away from people that should be there instead. Bay crushed an amazing 0 home runs over the fence. Too bad his home country of Canada probably only had about 3 people see him do this while they were flipping through the channels during a commercial break for the exhibition CFL game they were watching. I guess we should be glad that he didn't swing and miss like Brett Boone did in 2003.

Good idea for trying to spice up the home run derby a little bit, just a bad way to do it. The bad reason is that you leave out a bunch of well deserving guys to hit in the derby that have been having great years so far, and insert some crappy hitters just because they were born in a certain country:
Morgan Ensberg
Paul Konerko
Jermaine Dye
Travis Hafner
Adam Dunn
(the list goes on...)