Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how to get Major League Baseball to market to me directly. My personal e-mail account is lamentably free of sales pitches touting bargains at MLB.com, and hardly an hour goes by without me checking my cell phone to see if MLB has figured out a way to reach me wherever I happen to be with special offers on cheap tickets, or fantasy games I might like to play. If this isn’t something to worry over, nothing is.

Luckily, the middle of summer is here, and so the answer to my problem is at hand: The Monster 2008 All-Star Game Final Vote Ballot. Part of a voting process so arcane it would shame the designers of the Democratic primary system, the M2K8ASGFVB, as I like to call it, allows MLB to harvest the e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers of loyal fans who, in exchange for helping MLB construct a massive database full of priceless personal contact information, get to choose the final player on each All-Star roster. The last deal this good involved Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon, and the American Midwest.

All you have to do to use the M2K8ASGFVB is go to MLB.com, where you’ll find instructions on how to vote — and sign up for vital direct marketing — using your e-mail address or mobile device. Each league offers five candidates chosen by the team managers in consultation with the commissioner’s office, making this the fourth distinct way to elect an All-Star, the others being direct fan voting, player voting, and managerial picks. Had Democrats used a similar process to choose a candidate they probably would have ended up with Gene Amondson, who’s running for the presidency to reinstate the Eighteenth Amendment, but baseball fans have proved wise in the six years in which they’ve been entrusted with the final roster spot, putting Roy Oswalt and Bobby Abreu in their first All-Star Games and soundly rejecting the likes of Benito Santiago and Luis Castillo.

This year, the choices are strong. The American League probably has the better of it. You can vote for Tampa Bay’s rookie third baseman Evan Longoria, who’s basically David Wright with a sea creature on his jersey; Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi, who’s eighth in both on-base and slugging average and first in extraordinary facial hair; Chicago right fielder Jermaine Dye, third in OPS for a team that was the best in the league for much of the first half, or Baltimore’s Brian Roberts, who’s hitting about as well as any of them while playing second base.

My vote, though, went to Kansas City’s Jose Guillen. Yes, he reportedly tried to start a fight with the team’s pitching coach last weekend; yes, his .272 BA/.297 OBA/.465 SLG line is about average, and lousy for a corner outfielder. These are hardly points against him; if the All-Star teams are to truly represent baseball, they have to represent both the game’s bad seeds and its many mediocre players. Further, Guillen is third in the league in runs batted in. Voting for him while giving MLB my cell phone number made my day, and it can make yours, too.

In the National League, the choices are weaker. The leader in early voting, Milwaukee right fielder Corey Hart, has a park-adjusted OPS 21% above league average; San Francisco center fielder Aaron Rowand’s is 18% above average. Both, then, are doing worse than Jose Reyes, who clocks in at 25% above par and is, unlike these two, a spectacular if frustrating shortstop. A third candidate is Houston’s Carlos Lee, who, at 30% above average, is barely better than Reyes with the bat and a butcher in left field. He’s a tempting choice, given his fourth-place spot in the RBI derby, but I couldn’t quite vote for him.

For me, the choice came down to Philadelphia’s Pat Burrell, who’s slugging nearly .600 in the best year of his career, and David Wright, whose batting line looks exactly as it always does after an unconscious last two weeks. Burrell’s probably having the better year, but of all the players on the M2K8ASGFVB, Wright is the one (aside, of course, from Guillen) whose omission from the roster is really an embarrassment. A strong push from New York City could push him past Hart, so vote early and vote often. Unless you’re a Yankees fan, in which case you should vote for Burrell, the legendary Mets slayer. Whomever you vote for, make sure not to opt out of any promotional offers. Life without daily e-mails encouraging you to buy Toronto Blue Jays apparel at bargain rates may be a sort of life; but it’s not really the sort worth living.

tmarchman@nysun.com