Why Baseball Fails to Respect All-Star Tradition

It's a tired argument now: Bud Selig is screwing up the All-Star Game by allowing it to decide home field advantage in the World Series. This tired argument should not be put to bed.

Eight sluggers—Lance Berkman, Josh Hamilton, Vladimir Guerrero, Grady Sizemore, Dan Uggla, Chase Utley, Evan Longoria, Ryan Braun, and Justin Morneau—will compete in the 22nd Home Run Derby tonight at Yankee Stadium.

A pair of squads packed with baseball's best and most popular will then hit the field tomorrow for the league's 79th All-Star Game.

Selig decided almost five years ago that this supposedly meaningless "Midsummer Classic" should mean something. He did it after the National League and American League finished the 2002 contest in a 7-7 tie. When both squads ran out of pitchers, the two managers, Joe Torre and Bob Brenly, decided to end the evening.

Call me a traditionalist or a starstruck idiot, but I prefer that my All-Star games consist of nothing but showboating and more showboating.

I'll take a competitive game if I can get one, but the priority, as it should be, is watching ultra-talented players show me, the unathletic viewer, everything my body will never allow me to do.

Consider it the chief reason I will always tune in to the NBA's All-Star Game, even if people think it has become a vainglorious, trite photo opportunity.

An All-Star contest is a chance to comically celebrate that athletes are overpaid and over appreciated. What Selig did in 2003 was attempt to hide that Alex Rodriguez will make more money in his career than maybe 100 dedicated elementary school teachers might make in 10 lifetimes.

He saw that ratings were shrinking and took that to mean that people wanted him to give the summer classic a facelift.

As ratings continue nosediving—last year's game drew 12 million viewers, the lowest in league history—it appears Selig misread the situation.

Home field advantage is sacred and should not be decided in a game that was created as an escape from regular competition. It also should not be decided based on whether the year is even or odd.

The team with the best record entering the World Series should win home field advantage. Why else do you strive for a first place finish?

Shouldn't such an apparent necessity—road records for baseball teams this year are comparable to the atrocious ones NBA teams compiled in the playoffs—be awarded by merit and not who won a glorified showboating contest?

That's what the summer classic is and always has been. When Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle played and when Sandy Koufax pitched and when Hank Aaron played—it was a showboating contest.

Selig disgraced the art of escapism when he launched the ad campaign, "This Time it Counts." This game never had to count, and as many analysts write gloomy editorials about why this once TV smash is now playing second fiddle to C.S.I. reruns, Selig should realize his error.

David Stern has the propensity to ruin almost anything, but given the right talent (think Jordan, Michael), he oversaw professional basketball's greatest, most watched era. The NBA's public relations effectiveness has dipped in the last decade but the zest and relaxed air of its All-Star Game has not.

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