Talking Sports: Major League Baseball Must Put All-Star Game in Proper Perspective

The 85th edition of Major League Baseball’s All-Star game will take place Tuesday, July 15 at Target Field in Minneapolis, home of the Minnesota Twins. As it does every year, the game will feature the cream of baseball’s crop and it is sure to be an entertaining three hours or more of baseball.

The game obviously doesn’t count for or against any individual team’s record in the standings. The individual players’ stats in the game don’t count towards their season stats. The American and National League teams are essentially at even strength every year.

So I’m curious as to why Major League Baseball still holds this game in the highest regard, in the sense that its outcome decides home field in the World Series.

It’s absolutely ridiculous.

The All-Star game should represent nothing more than a night of pure entertainment for the family gathered around the television at home.

No strings attached. No potentially season-altering results hanging in the balance.

No other major American sport—and yes, that includes soccer, particularly the MLS, whose popularity continues to skyrocket thanks especially to the U.S. Men’s National Team’s escape from the “Group of Death” in this year’s World Cup—decides home advantage in its championship series in an All-Star game.

It hasn’t always been this way. Prior to 2003 home field advantage in the World Series alternated every year between the AL and the NL. Then in 2003, MLB commissioner Bud Selig reached an agreement with the players union that awarded home field advantage in the World Series to the winning All-Star team.

It was an effort to make the game mean more amid a slow four-day break to the season in July—to attract larger television audiences and generate higher ratings.

The agreement was extended upon twice and was finally made permanent in 2005. And for the last nine years that agreement—once thought to make the game so much more exciting—has been it’s own worst enemy.

You still watch the NBA All-Star game, right? How about the NFL’s Pro Bowl? The NBA’s All-Star game has increased in popularity in recent years with the rise of young stars like Paul George, Blake Griffin, Kyrie Irving and Damian Lillard.

Do you really need the pull of home court in the NBA finals to continue tuning into that weekend’s festivities each February? I certainly don’t.

The recent changes to the NFL’s Pro Bowl—such as player captain fantasy drafts—have added a thrilling element to the game. Now for once we can see Peyton Manning, an AFC quarterback passing to the likes of NFC deep threats Dez Bryant and Jimmy Graham.

Those possibilities should be attractive enough for the fan base, especially since the NFL will likely never go back to having true home field advantage in its Super Bowls.

Rather than by a yearly alternating schedule or by winning the All-Star Game, home field advantage in the baseball’s Fall Classic should simply be given to the team with the better record at the end of the regular season.

THAT is old school. That is what America’s past time should represent. May the team with the best record be rewarded for its effort through a grueling 162-game journey.

That is, while baseball still hangs on to the DH rule. I am actually a huge proponent of the entire league adopting the DH rule, as it speeds up games and would theoretically give every team equal footing in the World Series.

Once a league-wide DH rule is implemented—and I think it’s only a matter of time—home field in the World Series won’t matter much. But as it stands, the NL has a tremendous advantage in the fact that its teams’ pitchers can hit at home and one of its bench players can be plugged right into a DH hole in the AL team’s park.

Nine out of ten American League pitchers—maybe even more than that—absolutely cannot hit. I’d estimate that only around half, if that, can drop down a passable sacrifice bunt.

So with that said, let’s take a look at the All-Star Game results since 2005 and the corresponding World Series matchups and outcomes in each season.

2005: American League wins game 7-5 at Comerica Park in Detroit. With home field advantage, the Chicago White Sox swept the Houston Astros in the World Series that season.

2006: American League wins game 3-2 at PNC Park in Pittsburgh—thanks to the former longtime captain of my Texas Rangers, Michael Young, who hit the game-winning triple, driving in Jose Lopez and Troy Glaus. The NL Wild Card, 83-game winning St. Louis Cardinals went on to win the 2006 World Series in five games against the Detroit Tigers.

2007: American League wins game 5-4 at AT&T Park in San Francisco. With the “monster”—get it?—Fenway advantage, the Boston Red Sox captured their second World Series title in three seasons with a sweep of the Colorado Rockies.

2008: American League wins game 4-3 at Old Yankee Stadium in New York in its going away season. The Philadelphia Phillies would go on to win their first World Series since the Mike Schmidt and Steve Carlton-led squad did it in 1980, defeating the upstart Tampa Bay Rays in five games.

2009: American League wins game 4-3 at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. The Yankees brought a World Series back home to the Bronx for the first time since 2000, the last year of their most recent legendary three-peat. They took care of the defending champion Phillies in six games.

2010: For the first time since 1997, the National League finally won the game. By a score of 3-1 at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, it broke a streak of 12 consecutive AL victories. That season, the San Francisco Giants defeated the Texas Rangers in five games. This year was the first year since 2002 that the NL had home field advantage in the World Series.

2011: National League wins game 5-1 at Chase Field in Phoenix. The St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Rangers in an epic seven-game series for the ages. We’ll come back to this one in a minute.

2012: National League wins its third straight game, 8-0. The San Francisco Giants once again pitch their way to a dominant World Series victory in a sweep of the Tigers.

2013: American League wins game 3-0 at Citi Field in Queens,New York. The Red Sox won their third championship in nine seasons, taking care of the Cardinals four games to two. In one of the most unforgettable plays ever to end a World Series, Cardinals pinch runner Kolten Wong was picked off first by Boston closer Koji Uehara to seal the title for the Red Sox.

Between 2005-07, the better team had home field in the World Series. The 2006 Cardinals snuck into the playoffs as the NL Wild Card and went on to win it all as the lone true Cinderella of this decade.

In 2008, the Rays were the team with the better record—in a tougher division—and even with home field advantage, fell to the Phillies in five games.

The Yankees won 103 games in 2009 and were clearly the better team against the Phillies in their title run.

In 2010 the Giants rightfully earned their title. They were awarded home field thanks to the NL’s win in the All-Star game, but they also finished two games ahead of the Rangers, whom they completely shut down in the series.

So it might appear that things are turning how they should be,at least in this sample of seasons.

That’s a complete coincidence though, folks. That’s the nature of the game. The coin can land on heads ten times in a row.

But 2011 is a glaring exception to what’s happened over the last nine seasons and serves to at least help make my overall point.

The 2011 Rangers team is considered the greatest in team history by far. Early in the 2011 season, this team was compared to the 1998 Yankees, which is about the highest compliment a team can be paid outside of being mentioned in the same breath as the single greatest team of all time, the 1927 Yankees.

Texas finished with a 96-66 record, a full six games ahead of the eventual champion Cardinals. The Rangers lost that series in seven games. But the series definitely could have ended differently if they had home field advantage in their Arlington launching pad, as they were the best home team in the AL that season.

Who knows? Maybe it could have been Mike Napoli belting a walk-off homer off of Jason Motte in game 6 to win the series for Texas.

Since 2011 was the only clear exception to “the better team should get home field” argument, go ahead and call me a Rangers homer if you must.

But in this sense, Major League Baseball needs to get back to its old-school roots—back to a time when the All-Star game was nothing more than a leisurely escape from the every day grind of following a team’s season. Not an all-important game that has the ability to single-handedly decide a season.

Back to a time when placement was decided solely on record.

Back to the way baseball should be.