Hey, great. And oh by the way, Curt Schilling is starting Tuesday night against Derek Lowe if we can part the clouds for a few minutes to play the actual game.

Ahhhhh, the glory of baseball. It isn't supposed to get lost in the subplots on the day before the All-Star Game. But it sure got lost Monday.

At the Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee, the All-Star players gathered in a seventh-floor ballroom to talk some ball. Except that there were four questions about That Other Stuff for every question about baseball.

The whole scene got so ludicrous that at one point, someone said to Nomar Garciaparra, "Is it OK if I ask a baseball question?"

Garciaparra couldn't have looked more stunned if he'd been asked to talk about nuclear fusion.

He actually pounded his fist on the table and deadpanned: "This isn't a baseball press conference. Come on, no baseball questions, man. We're talking steroids and labor and stuff. Don't you know where you are?"

Oh, yeah. Sure, we know. We were all in the middle of a three-ring circus we didn't buy tickets for.

Ring one: the labor circus
We applaud the player reps and their union leaders for doing their best Monday to avoid upstaging the All-Star Game. Too bad they didn't succeed.

Strike-date announcement or no strike-date announcement, if you couldn't find a good labor debate to get into Monday, it was only because you overslept.

A half-hour into the interview session Monday afternoon, I asked National League player representative Tom Glavine if it was disturbing to have spent this much time talking about everything but baseball.

"Haven't had an All-Star question yet," Glavine reported. "Yeah, it disturbs me. But for me, it's just something I understand. With my position as player rep, I get asked a lot of these questions. It doesn't take away from my enjoyment of the All-Star Game or from my enjoyment of playing in Atlanta. But yeah, it's unfortunate that so much of this is taking away from the fun and the excitement of the All-Star Game.

"But the reality," Glavine said, "is that we're in one of those years where a lot of this stuff is going on and everybody wants to know what is going on. I understand that. But from my standpoint, I'm going to try to enjoy the next two days as much as I always do."

Yeah, well, good luck. We've reached the stage in this labor mess where he -- and all of us -- can run from the labor questions, but there's nowhere to hide.

The players may not have announced a strike date Monday, but they'll announce one sooner or later. Then all the pre-work-stoppage hysteria can shift into the next gear -- until the final hours, at which point it could reach such a critical level that we may even have to call in (gasp) Larry King.

But the truth is, not even Don and Bud are looking forward to that. Or any of it. Remember that. They just happen to drive runaway trains that always seem to be careening in opposite directions down the same track.

"Nobody wants a strike," said Pirates closer Mike Williams. "And that's the truth. Neither side wants one. People should understand that the only reason to set a strike date is to get something done. If we don't, it will just keep going and going and going -- till the winter, when the owners would lock us out.

"But we don't want a strike. This can be resolved. It really can. It's just a matter of getting everyone inside and locking the door. Throw in a couple of bottles of water, but no food. Then check back in a week, and maybe throw in another couple of bottles of water. If we just do that, it can be worked out, no doubt."

So there. Feel better now? We can even run a SportsCenter/ESPN.com poll to pick which room they should be locked into. And then everybody will all live happily ever after -- till the next basic agreement runs out, anyway.

Ring two: the steroid circus
Monday was Home Run Derby night at the All-Star Game. That used to be a fun thing.

Look at that: Big Mac just knocked over the light tower. Sammy just broke the scoreboard. A guy in Alaska just reported getting hit on the head by a Jim Thome homer. What fun.

But by this Home Run Derby, the steroid hysteria had reached such an absurd pitch that a forthcoming USA Today poll is expected to show that 39 percent of all Home Run Derby viewers believe that if the participants didn't use steroids, 83 percent of their "home runs" would have been caught on the fly by the pitcher.

Or something like that.

"You know, this isn't one of those things," said Marlins third baseman Mike Lowell, "where you can just look at somebody and say, 'Yeah, he takes them.' I personally think fans tune in to watch the Home Run Derby because they like it, because they want to see who hits the ball out and where it lands. I don't think they tune in to see whose muscles are bulging out of their shirt."

Exactly. If they wanted to watch bulging muscles, they'd watch the World's Strongest Man competition.

But the problem is that if anybody at all thinks "steroids" while watching that Home Run Derby -- as opposed to, "Whoah. I wonder if that ball changed zip codes on the way down?" -- then it's all the more reason both sides have to address this issue.

"I agree with that," said Twins catcher A.J. Pierzynski. "We don't want that shadow hanging over the game. You've got people going up to Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa and asking questions. That's not good. Those guys are doing historic things. ... We've got to get that focus back on what they're doing on the field."

And if that takes some kind of agreement on steroid testing?

"Then it's definitely worth it," Pierzynski said. "As long as the testing is done right and both sides agree to it, I'm all for it."

Sooner or later, we're convinced, they will agree to it. The bad news was, they couldn't get that deal done before the first Home Run Derby bomb flew out of Miller Park -- and came down in North Dakota.

Ring three: the Expos circus
By now, we thought the Montreal Expos would be passing their final days in peace and serenity. Maybe sitting on a porch swing, reflecting nostalgically on their life story.

Except that the Montreal Expos refuse to follow that script. Their GM, Omar Minaya, apparently always wanted to be Monte Hall when he grew up -- because he's spending every spare second trying to deal for some team or other's opening-day starter.

After reeling in Bartolo Colon a couple of weeks ago, Minaya seemed to feel he was close to another deal in the last 48 hours -- a deal that would have brought Dempster and Floyd to Montreal in exchange for Graeme Lloyd, Masato Yoshii, three prospects and, in an unconfirmed report, Youppi!.

Then that deal abruptly fell apart, for reasons that appear to have had more to do with the Marlins getting apprehensive about actually doing it than with the financial issues that had initially tangled the discussions.

Whatever is going on, though, it's A) mind-boggling, B) suspicious, C) inexplicable or D) more fun than talking steroids.

"What their long-term plan is, I don't know," said Glavine. "All I know is, they've got some good young players there and they're trying to beat us."

But when asked if he was troubled that his team was paying 1/29th of Colon's salary, and the salaries of all the other Expos, Glavine smiled an intriguing smile.

"Now that," he said, "is a problem. But this is the system they seem to think they need (to operate). You can find all kinds of questions about it that don't seem right. But that's the system they feel they need to have right now. So I don't know what more we can do about it."

Of course, that's easy to say now. His team has a 9½-game lead on the Expos. If he played in Florida, on the other hand, he might have a harder time being so darned philosophical.

So Lowell, who does happen to play in Florida, was asked if he was confused about the direction his team was taking. He didn't pretend to be anything but.

"Very confused," he said. "When I look at the standings, we're a game and a half behind the Expos. And that's supposed to be a team that's doomed. But they've already added Bartolo Colon, and now they're talking about adding a guy like Cliff."

Lowell gave a brief public-service announcement encouraging his own team to think about adding instead of subtracting. But when asked if his confusion was heightened by the fact that his team was talking so actively with the Expos, Lowell shook his head.

"I think that opens the door for a lot of questions," Lowell said. "They're a team that's never been able to add people this time of year. Usually, they're on the flip side of that. And the fact that it's all the other owners who own the Montreal Expos, it's only human nature to question that."

So we allowed human nature to take its course -- and asked commissioner Bud Selig about all this Monday. Selig reiterated that he's had nothing to do with the day-to-day operations of the Expos.

But a baseball official confirmed that it is, in fact, Selig's office that has to approve any major transaction the Expos make. So they could be hearing about this one, although all indications Monday was that this particular swap was collapsing.

"I saw (Marlins president) David Samson last night, and he said there was no deal," Selig said. "I saw Sandy (Alderson) and John McHale today, and they're the two people in my office who have the most contact with the Expos people, and they've heard nothing about any deal. I guess somebody at some point will have to be asked about some deal. But so far, there has been no deal."

Deal or no deal, though, the whole Expos situation seems to be becoming a bigger deal all the time. And it's always great to have one more sideshow at a time like this, tearing us away from the things that are supposed to matter.

It's enough to make you long for next year's All-Star Game, by which time all of these issues will have been peacefully resolved forever and ever (sure they will) -- and we can go back to worrying about important stuff, like who gets to pitch the fourth inning.

"Nah," said Garciaparra. "One thing I've learned in this game is: It's always something. Next year, I'm sure you guys will find something else to talk about."

Yeah. Probably will. We can hardly wait.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.