The All-Star Game is where baseball presents itself as it would like to be seen. In everything from its setting to the player rosters, the game expresses the collective will of fans, players, coaches, and the commissioner’s office, an idealized vision of where the sport is and where it’s going. Ten years ago, for instance, during the vaunted summer of 1998, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds batted third and fourth for the National League in a game that took place at Colorado’s Coors Field. All-Star Games are telling.

This year’s All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium is likely to be more so than most. A quick glance at the rosters is almost shocking, as a whole generation of greats has vanished — Bonds, Roger Clemens, Ken Griffey, Greg Maddux, Randy Johnson, and Curt Schilling, among others, are either gone or spent as vital forces. On the National League side, only Albert Pujols and Chipper Jones count as anything near cinch Hall of Famers, while on the American League side, there are only a few more — Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Manny Ramirez, and Ichiro Suzuki. That’s seven in all.

One could fret here about the diminishing standard of greatness, but that would miss the whole point of this year’s game, which is all about baseball’s seemingly boundless capacity for renewal. Just months ago, Senator Mitchell released his infamous report on drugs in baseball, and from the reaction one would have thought the game was about to drown in its own corruption. Here we are in July, and the story is all about a bright new generation of stars.

The National League may only count two sure future Hall of Famers on its roster, but it also counts a vastly greater number of potential ones, not least the sublime David Wright and Chase Utley and first-time All-Stars Hanley Ramirez, Ryan Braun, and Tim Lincecum. The team also takes in catchers Russell Martin, Brian McCann, and Geovany Soto, who are all 25 or younger and among them comprise an embarrassment of talent at the position. Soto, the probable Rookie of the Year, heads a delegation of seven Chicago Cubs, among them unhittable setup man Carlos Marmol and Japanese veteran Kosuke Fukudome, who have helped the perennially awful north siders tie for the best record in the game.

Similarly, the American League roster may not be built entirely of iconic players, but it does boast a lot of impressive young talent. Cleveland center fielder Grady Sizemore and Minnesota catcher Joe Mauer, each 25, are leading potential heirs to Rodriguez’s title as best player in the league, while Scott Kazmir, at 24, may already be the best pitcher in the league. The Angels, tied with the Cubs for the best record in baseball, have three pitchers 27 or younger on the team, and Rangers second baseman Ian Kinsler, 26, leads the circuit in batting average and total bases while ranking fifth in steals. His teammate Josh Hamilton, who lost five years of his career to drug use, is on pace to drive in more runs than anyone since 1936.

There’s an irony in this new contingent of stars taking the stage as part of the game’s farewell to Yankee Stadium. Like the now-passed generation of stars of which McGwire and Bonds were a part, the stadium’s reputation has always been at some variance with reality. In theory one of the last of the baseball cathedrals, a living monument hallowed by Babe Ruth and Josh Gibson, the park in which the game’s brightest stars will play tonight was actually built 32 years ago and is a rather less exalted place to take in a game than such real cathedrals as Wrigley Field or Fenway Park. And like that generation of stars, it probably won’t be missed all that badly once its replacement has come on line; the best memories will endure while a somewhat less glorious reality fades.

Baseball — at least those who run it — in many ways doesn’t deserve such neat resolutions to its problems, but one of the beauties of the game is the way it’s always changing. Corruption just sets the stage for the emergence of a new generation untainted by the mistakes of the past; old buildings are torn down, new ones take their place, and the dimmer parts of the past are quickly forgotten. For all the scandals, the game is more popular now than ever before, and that’s without the generation represented by Wright, Braun, Mauer and the rest having yet fully seized center stage, and with it the public’s imagination. Tonight will be their first chance to do so, and if the game’s long history is any guide, they’ll take the chance.

tmarchman@nysun.com