This is obvious move

LOS ANGELES – It’s not a Most Valuable Player game. It’s not a Best Statistical Player game.

This hootenanny in Anaheim next week, it’s an All-Star game, which means the only requirement is that participants are stars.

Whose appearance will make you stop, drop and stare? Who will make you shout to a neighbor or phone a friend? Of all the hundreds of baseball players who have paraded across the landscape this season, who will draw the most stares under the brightest of lights? Forget the studs, who are the stars?

For me, this year there is one.

His name is Stephen Strasburg, and if he is not on the National League All-Star team being announced today, then baseball just ruined its second perfect game of the season.

He is 6-feet-4, 220 pounds of gnarly, goateed drama. He is fresh, fun and darn near unfathomable.

I don’t care that the Washington Nationals pitcher has been in the big leagues only since June 5, making him the most inexperienced All-Star ever. I don’t care that he’s only made six starts, giving him the shortest resume of any All-Star ever.

I care about wow. Nobody has created more of a major league wow this season, the 21-year-old kid striking out 53 and walking 10 with a 2.45 earned-run average.

I care about wham. His first start June 8 against Pittsburgh, with the sports world watching as he carried the weight of being the No. 1 overall draft pick with a $15.1-million bonus, he struck out 14 and walked none.

I care about wicked. In his third start, he struck out 10 and walked none. In his fourth start, he struck out nine and walked none.

I care about whoa. The inspiration for this column came when I stopped in my living room Saturday afternoon and found myself tuning to a completely ordinary televised game between the Nationals and New York Mets. I was watching for the same reason that I once watched Saturday golf tournaments from obscure wooded courses. I was watching, and a national audience was watching, because Stephen Strasburg is the new Tiger Woods.

None of his first five pitches were under 99 mph. In the first inning, he froze David Wright with an 84-mph curve that plummeted through the strike zone, then struck him out with a 98-mph fastball that moved about five directions.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the kid. The Nationals didn’t score for him again – they have scored one run for him in his last four starts – so he occasionally tried too hard, giving up two runs and four hits in five innings. But he was a presence, and the game was an event, and baseball needs both of those to prop up a Midsummer Classic that even the spoils of home-field advantage in the World Series haven’t much helped.

Interleague play has taken away the All-Star game’s intrigue. Television packages that can show every game in every market have taken away the All-Star game’s surprise.

For one night, Strasburg could bring all that back. He doesn’t lead the league in wins – he has only two – but he will lead the game in camera flashes. He will lead the game in buzz. Whether he strikes someone out or gives up a bomb, he will lead the game in moments.