Still, a derby without Wily Mo just doesn’t seem right. The timing is too fortuitous. In the season MLB opens up the derby to non-All-Stars, the hardest-hitting man in baseball comes to the major leagues after a 2½-year absence and bops five home runs in 39 at-bats for the team that’s hosting the game. Wily Mo doesn’t need a metal bat to hit balls 500 feet. He would steal the damn show.

– Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports.

Passan compiles a list of suggestions to improve the All-Star Game, and I’m on board with all but one of them (more on that in a sec). I’m especially fond of the recommendation that Wily Mo Pena be included in every single Home Run Derby, because that’d be hilarious. Plus the guy can hit the ball really far.

But I’ll take it one more step and say if baseball really wants to use home-run diplomacy to reach out to new fans, why not pull Pena and a squad of his fellow masher-types from the affiliated ranks and pay them to tour the country and world as baseball-crushing ambassadors? The Wily Mo Pena Longball Show, coming soon to a ballpark near you. Yeah, it lacks the subtleties of the actual sport but it’d be a veritable real-life highlight reel, plus a great way to keep Russ Branyan gainfully employed.

The one thing Passan suggests I cannot abide, though — in the Home Run Derby, this fantasy-world Wily Mo Pena Show or elsewhere — is the use of metal bats. C’mon. You’re going to want to hear that crack on every 480-foot homer, even if it means giving up a little bit of distance. As a great man once said, “it’s the wood that makes it good.” I’d rather they use juiced balls if they’re going to abandon regulation equipment.

Via Ben.