Like him or hate him, Bud Selig is presiding over the most financially prosperous era in baseball history. Some of the commisioner’s most controversial decisions - interleague play and the the wild-card format, for example - have proven wildly successful and popular with fans. Other controversial decisions - expansion and league realignment, and his reluctant “pursuit” of steroid users - have yet to fully play out, but they haven’t stopped the ballpark turnstyles from spinning, and Bud has survived any stain of credibility, earning what is essentially a lifetime stamp of approval from the owners. Even the Players Union seems to tolerate Selig, and never has such an uninterrupted peace between the players and owners existed.But one of Bud’s biggest gaffes occured six years ago at the All-Star Game in Milwaukee when he ordered the game to stop when each team “ran out of players.” The resulting tie caused a furor and a backlash that prompted the commissioner to make a decision that hangs like a cloud over two of the National Pastime’s most celebrated traditions. Selig decreed that the winner of the All-Star Game would determine which league would have home field advantage in the World Series. Beneath the dreadfully ignorant tagline of “This Time it Counts!” Major League Baseball tried to repackage the midsummer classic from a in-season exhibition into a war between two leagues.
This “experiment” has been a failure and it should be abandoned.
The irony is that Selig’s decision marginalized baseball’s All-Star Game, which has always been the very best all-star contest in sports. For many years since it began in 1933, the two leagues have had a very real rivalry, but when Selig plunked down a contrived reason to win, the participants shrugged it off.
“It’s a joke,” one Hall of Famer said in 2005. “No one is going to risk any injury to win that game, and [the players] are not in favor of it [deciding home field advantage for the Series].”
In an article for the AP recently, Tom Glavine agreed. “I’m not a big fan of the home-field advantage thing. I don’t think most players are.” Glavine should know, he’s a player representative to the union and he’s been involved at the highest levels in negotiations with the owners for more than a decade.
“I just think that in an effort to continue the goodwill that was going on between the players and the owners, this is something that we agreed to do because Fox really wanted it. So it was kind of an olive branch thing. We agreed to do it, but I don’t think any of us agrees with it per se,” Glavine said. “We’re basically doing it because other people want us to. And so we do. In a perfect world, we would all love the team with the best record to have home-field advantage. But we keep being told that we can’t do that. I’m not quite sure why.”
In 2002, when the two managers - Joe Torre and Bob Brenly - misused their rosters, leaving them without pitchers for an extra-inning game, the media and fans were outraged that the game was ended in a tie. The poor planning by the league to foresee this possibility was the fault, not efforts of the players. Tying the game to the World Series isn’t going to make fans want to watch it. Fox Sports, who were left to explain the outcome of the 2002 game to their audience, has demanded the connection, thinking it draws viewers. Yet, in both 2004 and 2005, the All-Star Game drew the lowest ratings in its’ history.
Great players, exciting plays, and drama make for a good All-Star Game. That will occur naturally (as it has in recent years). There’s no need to manufacture it, and the unfairness of rewarding one league the home field advantage because of an exhibition game outcome (the American League has won every game since the ruling) is evident. Why should a National League team (say the Cubs) who may post baseball’s best record, have to play a deciding Game Seven of the Fall Classic on the road because a member of the Seattle Mariners drove in the winning run in the All-Star Game back in July?
Mr. Selig, wipe away this absurd decision and give us back the All-Star Game and World Series the way they used to be.