Tuesday night was “the mid-summer classic” Major League Baseball’s (MLB) All Star Game. For my money it, by far, the best of the 4 major North American sport’s All Star Games. I’ll never stop gushing over MLB, but even I must admire that this year, the All Star Game (ASG) seems less relevant than ever.
Has the All-Star game, or all All-Star games in professional sports, become completely irrelevant? As it stands, the NFL no longer holds it pro bowl game. They have a week of “All-Star festivities” that follow up the Super Bowl, but that’s it. For years, the NBA All-Star game has been completely devoid of defense. that’s why the score is an NBA All-Star games end up looking like 183-180 at the end of regulation play. As for the NHL All-Star team, I could take it or I could leave it. They’ve tweaked with the format so many times in the last 20 years I’m not really sure if even the league understands the point of it anymore.
Let’s face it: the ASG is a popularity contest. Fans actually view in the starting line up for both the American & National Leagues. RBIs result is players who are not necessarily the best at their position making the team. More often than not, former superstars who are in the back-half of their careers end up coasting into an ASG start.
From 2003 to 2016, the winning league and each year All-Star game was awarded home-field advantage for that season’s World Series. Even in the TV coverage, Fox used the tagline “this time it counts“ to differentiate from the exhibition game feel of previous seasons.
From 2017 onward, it was decided that whichever league champion had the best regular season record was awarded home-field advantage in the World Series. This makes sense. After all, there has to be some advantage to having the best record of the regular season.
Last night, was a great example of why one shouldn’t mess around with traditional rules. I hadn’t heard of this before previously, but at some point, it was decided that in the event of a tiebreaker in the All-Star game, a winner would be determined via a home run Derby swing-off. Not to be confused with the Home arum Derby that was held the previous night
I have yet to hear much discussion about it this morning, but how many people really wanted to see a game featuring the best players of the sport that started as a blowout, to feature a come-from-behind rally by the American league; only to have the winner of such a contest, ultimately be determined by a home run Derby?
Of course, there is a great reason why the game didn’t go to extra innings. Back in 2002, the MLB All-Star game ended in a 7–7 tie after 11 innings. The decision to end the game and I was made since both teams ran out of pitchers.
For those of you that don’t know, starting pictures generally only appear every 4 to 5 days as they need time to recuperate after throwing multiple innings in a game. Even relief pictures, who only appear for one or two innings, typically don’t throw every single day. Even if any pitchers still were available, at that point it would have pushed back their next appearance in a regular season game back four or five days. Both managers agreed that they didn’t want to do anything that would jeopardize any of the 30 MLB teams schedule is going forward. so the decision was made to end the game as a tie.
Fans were, naturally, furious. The following year is when the decision was made to add the “home-field advantage” stipulation to the All-Star game. Furthermore, All-Star game rosters were expanded to include many more players in order to prevent such an incident from repeating itself.
But now, MLB may be back in the same situation. They were in in 2002. What was the point of all of this? What would’ve been so bad about any of the game with a tie, especially if the All-Star game no longer determines home-field advantage for the World Series? Sure it’s an exhibition, it’s a show of the best players in the sport. What fans have really been upset if the game ended in a tie? And would they have been more or less upset than they are now because the winner was determined it in “a swing off“? Was the tie even necessary, given how many players make up both American League and National League rosters? 
It will be interesting to see and these and weeks ahead how MLB addresses the situation with last night‘s game. Will the home run Derby be the ongoing tiebreaker going forward? Or was it a last-minute decision simply to wrap the game up as quickly as possible, as the time was well past 11 PM Eastern before the game ended.
For all of my complaining, I still think the MLB All-Star game is the best All-Star game of any of the major North American sports. It’s not perfect by any means, but I don’t think it would take a lot of radical rethinking to make the game even better. I just hope the league doesn’t jump to any knee-jerk reactions. 
Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related posts
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- The Extra Day: A Ten-Year Memory
- Of Training Wheels and Christmas Lights
- Charity Starts at Home (And I’m Back in My Childhood One)
- The Muscle of Empathy
The article “Wither, MLB All Star Game?“ first appeared in Rebuilding Rob.
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