A’s fans should pull an ’88 Terry Steinbach All-Star move with Sean Murphy

It’s All-Star voting SZN.

Back in the day, up until the 2015 season, MLB fans could help decide the All-Star game rosters by punching out holes in little paper ballots. The little red dots used to be floating around the concourse by the end of the game and you had to lug around 25 of those suckers in your pocket and they’d be all mashed up. Miss those days.

Thirty-three years ago, A’s fans caused a ruckus by sneaking Terry Steinbach into the 1988 midsummer classic, alongside Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Dennis Eckersley and Carney Lansford.

Steinbach got so many votes that he even started the game at catcher, though many figured he was the least deserving player out of the 56 All-Stars elected that year. He toted a .217/.298/.362 slash line with five homers and 19 RBI by the break — not exactly All-Star starter numbers. 

At that point, he had actually started 39 games at catcher for the A’s compared to 47 for veteran Ron Hassey, so Steinbach wasn’t even the top backstop on his team lmao. 

But Steiny showed ‘em all up — driving in both of the American League’s runs in a 2-1 victory. He highlighted the game with his solo shot against Doc Gooden, hitting it just out of the reach of Darryl Strawberry — now those are some classic baseball names.

At the end of the night, Steinbach was hoisting the All-Star MVP trophy.

“Should I have been there? Probably not, if you look at the numbers,” Steinbach said a few years ago. “But I wasn’t going to turn it down, and I wasn’t going to let it bother me.”

It would be hilarious to see A’s fans can stuff the virtual ballot boxes this summer and get Sean Murphy starting on the AL squad. Salvador Perez is by far the best catcher in the AL this season (he took the A’s deep twice last night) but after Salvy, it looks like a pretty wide open field.

Murphy is slashing .211/.303/.392 with six homers. His 32 RBI rank second among AL catchers, while his 36 hits rank third among that group. Murph has shown the ability to come through with runners on, as he’s batting .400 with RISP this season.

A’s fans showed their might in the 2014 #FaceOfMLB contest to get Eric Sogard into the finals, where he was mysteriously overtaken by David Wright in the 11th hour.

*cough* MLB used foreign vote bots from Thailand to rig the contest *cough*

Would it be so outrageous to get Murph voted into the ASG this year?