Sports Media Review by Jonathan Weiler

Thursday, July 13, 2006
12:38:00 PM EDT

I don’t have anything original to say about the all-star game new-found relationship to the World Series. It’s really stupid, and I think that’s really clear to most people. Especially since, while it's supposed to count, the game is treated like a joke.

Anyway, here’s some of the better commentary on it over the past couple of days. 

From King Kaufman at Salon.com (http://www.salon.com/sports/col/kaufman/2006/07/11/tuesday/index.html):

“Baseball's All-Star Game needs fixing. The Midsummer Classic, renewed Tuesday night in Pittsburgh, is stuck in limbo. It's part silly exhibition, part deadly serious decider of postseason fates.

The two parts don't mix. And if the All-Star Game isn't already a joke, it's getting very close. Want to elicit derisive snorts among baseball fans? Use "This time it counts!" as a punch line. It never misses.

This is the first year I've seriously heard a commentator compare baseball's All-Star Game to the NFL's, the Pro Bowl, and I have to say the comparison sounded pretty fair to me. It's a rule of life as crucial as not playing poker with guys named Doc: Don't let anything you care about get compared to the Pro Bowl.

Thanks mostly, but not entirely, to historical factors beyond the control of mere mortals, the All-Star Game was already well on its way to irrelevance in 2002 when the dreaded tie game forced commissioner Bud Selig to make a decision, which is never a good thing. He made a typically Seligian move by declaring that to fix the All-Star Game, he would change the way the World Series works.

Selig's the kind of guy who fixes his muffler by getting a louder stereo.

The problem at hand was that the teams ran out of pitchers to throw in extra innings, the result of the effort to get every player in the game. Rather than telling the managers "Stop doing that," Selig declared that the winning league in the All-Star Game would have home-field advantage in the World Series.”

From a caller on WFAN in NY yesterday:

“If the all-star game is so important, why is the game going to be in the national league park for a second year in a row.” 

From Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus (http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=5292):

“I don't get it. How do you make a big deal about "This Time It Counts," and then let one of the managers go on TV and basically wash his hands for the night? Either the game is critical or it isn't; the relentless mixed messages are tiring.

I genuinely don't know how you could watch this game and buy into any tiny fraction of the ideas that 1) the All-Star Game should "count" or 2) the game can tell you anything about the relative strength of the two leagues.

I saw spring-training games in Phoenix in the first week of March, and they had a comparable level of intensity. Since Wright's home run, this has been a sleepwalk.

I think if you add defensive innings played and at-bats, you'll find that Gary Matthews Jr. and Matt Holliday led this game in playing time. Draw your own conclusions.”

Rob Neyer, ESPN:

I don't think I've said this many times or written it ever ... but I completely agree with John Kruk: Phil Garner blew this game in the ninth just as surely (and with significantly more premeditation) as Trevor Hoffman did.

It was simply unconscionable of Garner to lose a one-run game without using Andruw Jones and Scott Rolen ... particularly since the ninth inning featured lesser defensive players in left field and at third base. Somehow, Garner's late ineptitude managed to reverse-trump the early ineptitude of Ozzie Guillen, who somehow decided to favor Kenny Rogers with two innings, Johan Santana with one, and Francisco Liriano with none. I'm sure we could parse all the other substitutions and non-subsitutions, but those do a pretty good job, I think, of summing up the seriousness with which the managers took their assigned chores.

Kaufman also noted, by the way, that the teams with home field advantage have won five of the past six and 17 of the last 20 World Series. Now, it’s true that a lot of those teams clinched the series on the road, though one could argue that getting the first two games at home is one of the big advantages of home field advantage in a short series. In any event, home field really does appear matter. To make the all-star game count in this context doesn’t make the All-star game more important. It just trivializes the regular season and the World Series.

 

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