
If you’re looking for undeserving All-Stars, expansion teams in their first year of existence offer a ballpark’s worth of worthy candidates. Remember, by rule every team must have at least one representative at the game. So inevitably an expansion club, which is almost always in last place, sends someone with questionable qualifications. Chris Cannizzaro’s credentials were just unquestionably bad. The San Diego Padres catcher hit a stunning .245 with two home runs in the first half of the season. He followed up that All-Star semester with a monster .170 batting average in the second half. And it’s not like Cannizzaro was a Hall of Famer with his glove. Casey Stengel, who managed Cannizzaro when he played for the hapless New York Mets in the early ’60s, once said of his young backstop, “He’s a remarkable catcher, that Canzoneri. He’s the only defensive catcher in baseball who can’t catch.”