MLB All-Star Game: How would I change the game?
By Will Osgood
Baseball is a historical game, which should reach back into its past to recover some of its best elements to further improve The Midsummer Classic.
The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, often referred to as “the Midsummer Classic”, is one of baseball’s oldest traditions dating back to 1933. It was interrupted just one year, in 1945, when World War II prohibited much of anything from taking place in the United States, or the world at large.
It’s become its own grandiose event—on par with say a golf major because it’s one of the few times all the stars come out. The MLB All-Star Game is as much representative of baseball today as the World Series, despite the fact there’s so much more at stake in the latter.
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Interestingly enough, in 2003, at the behest of the progressive commissioner Bud Selig, Major League Baseball linked the two events inextricably and unexplainably together. It infamously did so by extending the right for the winning league’s World Series representative to host the World Series that fall.
Granted Selig was known for being an old school kind of guy—he barely ever used a computer for instance, according to various reports passed down through the years. But his old school traits and distinctions did not stop him from making more changes—hence the progressive label—to baseball than any other commissioner ever, heck probably combined.
The two most noteworthy, aside from All-Star Game winner earning homefield advantage in the World Series was interleague play which was actually preceded by the reshuffling of the divisions to add a “Wild Card” spot—something which scraped sharply against the philosophical tethers of baseball lore.
Baseball’s format of 154, and then 162, regular season games was based on the fact the high number of contests would produce a worthy league winner. Prior to 1969, both leagues would send a team to the World Series based entirely on the regular season records.
Of course there were fewer teams, thus having one division was more tenable. As baseball began expanding in the 1960s there arose a need to split into two divisions which led to the evolution of the League Championship Series (LCS).
As baseball expanded further—all the way to 30 teams in 1998—it made more and more sense to further expand the playoff structure. But the changes made over time never touched “The Midsummer Classic”. And there was never any need for it to be touched.
But we could also reckon the expansion of baseball was a financial decision as much as it was a way to improve the game. Professional sport can never be detached from money, and for decades—really until about the 1990s—America’s Past time was at the heart of this pulling tug of war between professionalism (read: money-making business) and love of the game.
As accepted as expansion and interleague play are now in 2015, as are the two Wild Cards in each league, they are at least on some level undoubtedly the result of profit-seeking.
But none of these changes threatened to change the All-Star Game. It was, and largely still is, its own autonomous creature. It is without a doubt the most storied All-Star event in professional sports. Its pomp is mostly unbridled and maintains an innocence about it, though it is being tested regularly, especially now in the 21st century.
The Midsummer Classic still carries with it an aura of invincibility and a sense of all that is right about baseball and about America. But just as the country it most resembles and symbolizes, it has been affected by commercialism and greed.
As much as some baseball purists may like to see the artificial pomp removed, it is not going away. And note, the artificial pomp of the MLB All-Star Game does not, and probably could not if it tried, reach the level of artificial pomp present in the other three major league All-Star events.
To try and succeed to make it like the others would effectively the kill the event as a whole. But there are some changes which could make it better, in fact which could work further to make it less like the other major league All-Star events—though these changes on the surface actually would seem to act contrary to the stated goal.
I have just three changes in mind to make the All-Star Game better, to take it from an event which can be overlooked by some to once again making it The Midsummer Classic—an event every American enjoys.
I imagine each of these changes would appeal to the baseball purist—something I am, for the most part. And in so doing, the likely result would be a better game and event each middle of July.
Next: Should every team be represented?