The online voting system sucked. I went to vote for Bonderman 3 different times and could only get a ballot up once.
I voted for Young, too.

I hope Okajima doesn't pitch. He could probably use a few days off.

Hurray for Salaryman! He seems like the epitome of the sort of modest, hard working player everyone wants on their team.

Nice.
Chris Young should have been on the original ballot.
this is just correcting a mistake by LaRussa.

I hope he Okajima doesn't pitch either.

They picked a non-Webb pitcher from the D-Backs, which is just weird.

Sorry Neshek... I tried.

Fix!

Is there any point in having a final ballot competition when you name a player from the Yankees or Red Sox to the AL ballot? And especially a Japanese Yankee or Red Sox?

Well, isn't that good, that the ballot system didn't allow for your stuffing?

Racist balloting system, only allowing Asian people to stuff the boxes.

What's wrong with stuffing?

Well, isn't that good, that the ballot system didn't allow for your stuffing?

Well, the way this final ballot was deisgned and marketed not only allowed for stuffing but encouraged it.

If its any consolation, Walewander, I probably more than made up for your inability to vote for Bonderman (alas to no avail).

-I put in a bunch of votes for Neshek, because he's awesome.

-Though people are right about the problem of the last-voted-in rule (have like 75% been Red Sox?), it's pretty hard to argue that Hideki Okajima isn't a deserving All-Star. He has an 0.88 ERA in 41 IP, he's been throwing in high-lev situations since mid-April, and he's a lot of fun to watch - there aren't that many guys who have struck out Barry Bonds from down 3-1 with back-to-back 86-mph fastballs.

I voted for Neshek more than 150 times. Just to complete the ballot, I also had Chris Young on each of those submissions, but I would never have voted 150 times with Chris Young as the motivation. Of course, Neshek giving up the game winning HR to Matsui an hour before the voting closed was a nationalistic nail in the coffin. Patriotism runs deeper than Yankee-Red Sock allegiances, especially when they are coproductive.

By the way, does anyone else find it odd that there's a stereotype that Asians are apolitical and do not vote, but they seemingly dominate all-star balloting? Does this mean that if John Edwards marched through northern california with a baseball bat on his shoulder he would dominate the asian-american vote? Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that asian-americans are underrepresented as politicians, but decreasingly so on all-star ballots.

And once again, the two winners both played at their home ballpark during the Final Vote balloting. That makes 11 out of 12 in the 6-year history of the vote.