CINCINNATI – Cincinnati Reds’ first baseman Joey Votto appears to be a shoo-in for the National League Most Valuable Player award, but many don’t realize the important role the exchange rate plays in the decision.

“It’s tougher for a Canadian in this sport,” said Minnesota Twins’ Justin Morneau. “Not only do we have to be 1.01422 times the player of an American to be noticed, but we’re also relentlessly subjected to lumberjack jokes.”

Despite the iniquity, things are better today than they were just a few years ago for citizens of the Great White North. As recently as 2002, a United States player (USP) was worth one and a half Canadian players (CAP). Things have been much different since 2008, thanks to a soft USP.

“Five years ago things were even worse, eh?” said New York Mets’ outfielder and British Columbia native Jason Bay. “You’d think that no one would really care about the Home Run Derby, but you’d be wrong, hoser. Try not hitting any and see how your exchange rate drops.”

Baseball macroeconomists cite the undervalued Chinese player, pegged to the USP at 0.14988 as playing a role in this changing baseball economy, but most people don’t really understand what that has to do with anything.

“I saw that Votto play,” said Chicago Cubs’ starting pitcher Ryan Dempster. “When I wasn’t busy listening to Alanis Morisette and Glass Tiger. He’s definitely worth 1.01422 times the best American player out there.”

Most agree with Dempster. The real question is whether the beat writers can avoid choking on all these stale Canadian stereotypes long enough to do the math: how a whole season of Canadian Votto compare to one month of Venezuelan Carlos González with an exchange rate of 1:4,240.11.

It’s Wednesday morning, and, as it turns out, the NL winning the All-Star game for once was not a dream. Today is the one day that I and my NL fan coworkers are on the same side, banding together to harass and annoy the local White Sox fans.

That’s right, it’s the one day when I commune with the Cards fans and even Cubs fans to…wait, what did Joey Votto say according to the Chicago Cubs blog on ESPN?

I don’t like the Cubs,” Votto said. “And I’m not going to pat anybody with a Cubs uniform on the back. But because he made that really cool play, it turned out to be a really cool experience. I’m really glad we got the win today.

Ha! Well said. I almost take back what I said about thinking Votto would be a boring conversationalist, what with all his “Manuel was just looking out for his own guy,” and “I’m just grateful to get the opportunity” nicey-nice stuff.

I almost get the feeling there could be a real justified-in-being-arrogant guy buried deep down in that mild-mannered, work-ethic, too-shy-to-want-to-be-famous, Canadian-Mountie exterior. Letting the guy out right after seeing all of two pitches in two All-Star ABs might be a touch premauture, but it’s certainly not boring.

The irony is that just as my summer classes wrapped up, and I can watch baseball without the guilt of not reading my homework, the All-Star Break comes around, preceded briefly by four of the crappiest games the Reds have played all season.

I mean, sure, I have one whole late-game Joey Votto AB to look forward to, but this isn’t exactly a standard week of baseball. That’s probably a good thing, given those four crappy games I just mentioned. Clearly I’m not there, and I can’t say for sure that the team could use a few days off, but I know that, personally, I pretty much always could use a few days off.

In other news, MLB sent me an email with a “reward” for voting in the Last Man competition. Just think: 10 whole days of a free trial of MLB.tv! How did I ever get so lucky?

MLB almost tricked me into entering the Win a Free All Star Batting Practice Jersey contest, by sending the message through Reds.com. “Giving away 30 jerseys?” I thought, “among a hundred thousand people who will enter? I like those odds!” When I read closer and realized it was one jersey per team, so 30 jerseys among 20 million fans, suddenly I found myself not so willing to hand over access to my browser activity after all.

Home Run Derby is tomorrow, and it’s not exactly a magnet for the heavy hitters this year. I like how they’re spinning it on MLB.com

The cast in Monday’s State Farm Home Run Derby may not be as star-studded as in years past, but the intrigue has hardly taken a hit.

It’s “hardly” taken a hit. Just barely. Just entirely. Personally, I may take a nap. I can’t speak for the Reds, but I’m tired.

And it’s about time!

Congratulations to everyone out there who did their part to get Joey Votto elected to the All-Star Game. From Reds.com:

Votto was a machine throughout the Final Vote. The Reds’ first baseman won wire-to-wire, powered by a fury of snub response and leading all vote-getters with 13.7 million en route to becoming the first Cincinnati player to win the All-Star Final Vote.

I think I’ll celebrate my finishing my Business Law final and drinking a Canadian beer. Go Reds!

I love waking up in the morning to find an alert on my phone that the Cardinals bullpen struck again and the team’s early lead evaporated at the last possible moment. St. Louis has had the worst luck this season–enough, I think, to call them snake-bit. It’s about time. This puts the Reds three games into the lead of the division and 12 games over .500. Those are some nice numbers.

The last-man voting for the All-Star Game ends today at 4 p.m. ET, which is a little more than five hours away. If the Twitter feeds are to be believed, there are some people who are really throwing their heart and soul into this vote. A surprising number of people have claimed to have voted “the maximum,” which apparently means they didn’t even go to the site before claiming to have thrown in their lot with Votto, since there is not limit on how many times you can vote in this contest.

That’s right, five hours of voting and no limit on what you, too, can contribute. Even with as slow as the site loads the verification codes, you can squeeze in about 400 votes per hour. You still have time to tack on a couple thousand votes! No lead is safe!

A couple hours after we get the news about whether our voting efforts have been fruitful, the Reds will take on the Phillies. Tonight game will be to take a shot for every line-drive that almost takes Ryan Howard’s head off.