Speaking of the All-Star break, it’s time for that annual interruption of the everydayness of real baseball for an exhibition game where 50 or so talented and criminally overpaid jocks try for nine innings not to get injured in a pointless exercise. I always thought that the best thing in From Here to Eternity was not Montgomery Clift over-egging his tortured soul character, not Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr wrestling on that beach, not the brash Maggio. No, for me that best thing about this long-ago flick was that great song, “Reenlistment Blues,” the plaintive lament of the Army lifer. There should be a plaintive lament for the true baseball fan, “The All-Star Break Blues.” I’d be singing it right now, as I try to make it to next Friday without developing symptoms.
