"Fox must not be running baseball after all. Stephen Strasburg did not make the All-Star team.

Not that the suits at Fox are wearing their sad faces. The All-Star game will look like most of the games shown on national television, with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox wherever you look.

The Yankees got six players onto the All-Star team. So did the Red Sox.

No other team got as many. The Angels, the host team, got one. The San Diego Padres, with the best record in the National League and the best pitching staff in the world, got one. They got their first baseman onto the team, but none of their pitchers.

East Coast bias? Are the Yankees and Red Sox players that much better, or are they just reaping the benefits of all that publicity?

"I think it's more pub," said Angels center fielder Torii Hunter, the club's lone All-Star. "They get a lot of TV time.

"Those guys are good. Don't get it twisted. It's a really good division."

Of the 35 American League players selected Sunday, more than half represent the AL East, the most televised division, and the division with perhaps the three best teams in the major leagues.

The Yankees and Red Sox account for one-third of the AL roster.

"It's Red Sox Nation," Hunter said. "It's Yankee Empire. Yankee Universe? Whatever you call it. . . . You can't beat those guys when it comes to voting.

"There are going to be three or four Yankees and Red Sox every year, no matter what kind of season they're having."

Said Angels pitcher Ervin Santana: "Everybody loves the Yankees and Boston."

The players too. It is too easy to point the finger at the fans.

At third base, the fans voted for Evan Longoria of the Tampa Bay Rays. The players voted for Adrian Beltre of Boston. None of the six Red Sox players were elected by fans."