ST. LOUIS | OK, start with some blunt honesty because that&rsquo;s how Zack Greinke likes it: Greinke should be starting tonight&rsquo;s All-Star Game. That is no offense to Toronto&rsquo;s Roy Halladay, who is getting the start. He has been a terrific pitcher for years now, and he had a terrific first half also. Not as good as Greinke&rsquo;s. But terrific.</p><p> &ldquo;You look at the whole body of work,&rdquo; American League manager Joe Maddon said. And that&rsquo;s fine &hellip; except that&rsquo;s not how it has been. Last year, Cliff Lee got the start over Halladay because he was pitching better. Two years ago, Dan Haren got the start over Johan Santana because he was pitching better. Three years ago, Kenny Rogers got the start over Halladay and Santana because he was pitching better.</p><p> And so on. This is not the Irving G. Thalberg lifetime achievement award. It&rsquo;s the All-Star Game starting job. For years now, it has gone to the pitcher who had the best first half. That was Zack Greinke. He should be starting the game tonight.</p><p> But he&rsquo;s not starting &hellip; and he&rsquo;s fine with that. In fact, the decision to not start Greinke led to him showing, once again, just how far he has come the last three years. See, at the All-Star Game, the starter gets put into a giant room where he does one large easy-to-handle news conference &mdash; it usually involves answers about three questions (&ldquo;Are you honored to be the starter?&rdquo; &ldquo;No, I mean are you <em>really</em> honored to be the starter?). </p><p> The rest of the All-Stars are put into a ballroom, they sit at a table underneath a giant sign with their name on it (they get to take the sign home with them), and waves of reporters come at them for about 45 minutes. This is precisely the sort of setting that would have driven Greinke mad in his younger years &mdash; people rushing up to ask the same questions over and over again.</p><p> But Greinke at 25 is very different from Greinke at 21 or 22. He&rsquo;s been through a lot. He has overcome adversity. He has grown more comfortable with his life and the various duties that come with it. As he says: &ldquo;It just kind of feels normal now.&rdquo;</p><p> So when reporter after reporter walked up to ask how he felt about Halladay starting tonight&rsquo;s All-Star Game, he was able to say: &ldquo;I think it was the right decision.&rdquo;</p><p> And more: &ldquo;There&rsquo;s nobody else like him. He throws 93-mph sinkers and cutters, and he never misses his spot. Nobody else can do that. There are maybe a handful of guys out there who can throw 93-mph sinkers. Maybe. But they can&rsquo;t control it. There&rsquo;s not much else to say. It&rsquo;s really simple for him.&rdquo;</p><p> But when someone asked him whether he was honored just to be considered for the starting job along with Halladay, that blunt honesty came out: &ldquo;Well, I think I should have been considered. I mean, I don&rsquo;t think it was a runaway.&rdquo;</p><p> He was asked what makes Albert Pujols different, and he gave one of the best answers I&rsquo;ve ever heard. He explained that no hitter can possibly give 100 percent concentration on every single at-bat throughout an entire season &mdash; it&rsquo;s impossible. There are simply too many at-bats, too many different pressures, too many distractions. But, he said, Pujols honestly seems to have that same concentration every time. </p><p> &ldquo;You learn that every hitter is human,&rdquo; Greinke said, &ldquo;except Pujols.&rdquo;</p><p> Someone else asked him about Halladay starting. Someone else asked about the difficulty of facing Pujols. Someone asked him whether he prefers pitching in front of a full stadium (&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter to me &mdash; I know that it matters to other people but it doesn&rsquo;t to me&rdquo;).