Anyone old enough — I prefer “pre-deceased” — to remember the Buster Brown shoes jingle? Of Buster and his dog, Tige, who both “live inside,” it concluded that they’re “really just a picture, but it’s fun to play pretend!”

And playing pretend is what the sports media does in its annual overly enthusiastic imagined-significance emphasis on All-Star games, who made the teams and — scandal! — who didn’t!

This week we have MLB’s All-Star Game, next week the WNBA’s. And though it’s difficult to escape all media’s consuming interest in the games — triply so for TV networks with rental contracts with the leagues — the discriminating sports-minded will take a pass, perhaps even clean the attic, especially in the case of MLB’s former and now self-destroyed “Midseason Classic.”

MLB’s All-Star Game now exists to the viewing interest of fewer and fewer. Increasingly it has become an unneeded and unwanted afterthought to the Home Run Derby, which, as a gimmick, has grown tired, left for ESPN — the E stands for excess — to holler over its remains.