In the spirit of this all-star week – the 68th Major League All-Star Game is now in the books and young baseball players all over the country are currently battling to get their teams a dream berth in the Little League World Series – I pose the following question:

When is an all-star team not an all-star team?

Answer: When so many people are picked, the overall quality of the team is degraded to the point where it’s no longer an exlusive collection of “all-stars.”

If the standards are relaxed and it doesn’t take much to be a member, it’s no longer an all-star team. It’s more like an all-average-or-better team.

It’s not difficult to find an example of this increasing trend in amateur sports.

The latest issue of the Blue Star Report arrived at the sports desk the other day. This publication, which is devoted to college recruiting and the top high school basketball players from around the country, listed the top 20 women’s recruiting classes plus some honorable mentions, among which was the University of Maine.

That might mean a sizable feather in Maine’s recruiting cap if not for the fact that the Black Bears were one of 63 honorable mentions and 85 total schools included in the list. With almost 300 NCAA Division I women’s teams out there, that means Blue Star ranks Maine’s class in the top 29 percent. Not bad, but not exactly as exclusive as it seems on first glance.

This is just a minor example of the athletic feel-good trend that resembles outcome-based education: Let’s not single anyone out and reward them for excellence because that might embarrass or alienate those who wouldn’t have received such recognition under normal circumstances.

Instead, let’s include almost everyone on the team so they all can feel good about themselves. So what if some of them would have no business making the team if stricter standards were adhered to.

Some of the more ridiculous examples of this kind of thinking can be found whenever local high school leagues name their all-conference teams. Most of the time, it would be a lot easier to print the names of those who didn’t make the teams rather than those who did. They would certainly be shorter lists.

I’m not saying we should do away with all-star teams. Far be it. Instead, let’s get away from cheapening them by naming every Tom, Dick, and Harry and get back to making it something exclusive – something members of these teams can take legitimate pride in.

All-star teams should, by their very definition, include only the cream of the crop – not the cream, curds, and whey.

– Andrew Neff, BDN

The True Value Oxford 250 is a quality, well-run event.

But it’s too long.

Forty-four cars started the Oxford 250 at 8:10 p.m. Sunday, an hour and 10 minutes after it was scheduled to start.

A race-record 21 caution flags, a red flag, and three hours later, Turner’s Mike Rowe took the checkered flag. He was one of 16 finishers.

There have been Oxford 250s that certainly haven’t taken this long, but most take longer than they should.

Michael Liberty, president of Oxford Speedway Inc., can shorten the race and improve it by implementing one of three changes.

First, limit the field to 38 cars.

When you have 44 cars going bumper-to-bumper over a one-third-mile oval, there are bound to be a ton of accidents.

That’s especially true when so much money is at stake. Some drivers throw caution to the wind.

Accidents are a big part of the racing excitement, but if there are too many of them, it destroys the flow of the racing. Fewer cars would mean more continuous racing.

A second alternative would be to count the caution laps. The Oxford 250 is comprised of 250 laps of green flag racing. Sunday’s cars probably ran an extra 50-75 laps under the caution flag.

A third alternative would be to make it the True Value 200 by reducing it to a 200-lap race, all under the green flag.

Prior to the Oxford 250, there were 11 qualifying races and a couple of local races that gave the drivers in lower-division vehicles an opportunity to race in front of 10,000-15,000 fans.

I have no problem with either.

The qualifying races were dramatic and it’s a nice touch to allow the lower-division drivers an opportunity to compete in front of the biggest crowd they may ever race before.

They started the qualifying heats at 2 p.m. and Liberty probably should bump that back an hour to 1 p.m. to ensure that the Oxford 250 begins at 7.

The positives certainly outweigh the negatives at the True Value Oxford 250, but adopting one of these changes could make the event even better than it already is.

– Larry Mahoney, BDN