Major League Baseball pauses this week for its annual All-Star game. Well, almost annual. There was last yearâs pandemic-shortened season that skipped the observance. Baseball is back this year, though, and so are we with our own All-Star teams. Today we recognize nine heavy-hitters in the Southwest and Southside delegation to the General Assembly. On Tuesday, weâll have a line-up of nine other All-Stars who arenât in our delegation to Richmond. As with baseball, our All-Star picks come from different teams, so we have both Democrats and Republicans. Here they are and why: 1. State Sen. Bill Stanley, R-Franklin County. Once again he championed two causes that have special resonance in our region but are really statewide issues. He sponsored a constitutional amendment that would end the stateâs constitutionally sanctioned disparity between affluent and not-so-affluent school systems. And he pushed a statewide bond issue to provide $3 billion for school construction. For the first time, both made it through the state Senate, by wide and bipartisan margins, only to get strangled in committee by House Democrats â Democrats from the urban crescent, we should point out. The lack of interest that those Democrats have in school disparity â an issue that once was a Democratic cause â continues to mystify us.