MLB All-Star Game: How would I change the game?

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May 25, 2015; Cleveland, OH, USA; A general view of a Memorial Day base that will be used in a game between the Cleveland Indians and the Texas Rangers at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports /

3. Go back to playing the game during the day

Baseball purists ought to love me for this final revision to the Midsummer Classic. To play baseball, historically, is to a play a game during the day, in the heat of the day with the sun burning brightly down from the sky.

If an All-Star Game is to be an exhibition as I insist, ought it not feature the very best qualities of the game itself? As a baseball purist, and a Chicago Cubs fan, the thought of day baseball is equitable to playing baseball in heaven.

Sure even the Cubs at Wrigley Field now play a majority of their home games under the lights at night. And of course there is likely no going back from having the Fall Classic at night (and I’m only slightly bothered by this fact).

Now the obvious question comes, “Would anyone actually watch the game if it were played during the day?” Well plenty of people still watch day game baseball, though admittedly the numbers, I assume, are not as great as for night games.

Would it require moving the game to a weekend? Perhaps. Would anyone really mind if we changed the schedule so that instead of the unofficial first half of year ending on a Sunday, it ends on Thursday and then we have the Home Run Derby on a Friday night and play the game on Saturday afternoon at say 4 PM ET?

Would this cause a freakout of epic proportion? It shouldn’t.

Look, I know this change will never happen. Even Fox Saturday Baseball’s Game of the Week, which was once an afternoon affair, has evolved to mainly being played at night. I recognize this will not happen.

But a man, still holding to some of the precious idols of his childhood, can dream about the amazing beauty of seeing baseball played by the best players at a time of day which calls us back to earlier days and years, simpler times, when baseball and sport and society were not infiltrated by money-grabbing and artificial pomp.

Baseball was baseball. It was a game, played for the love of the game, by guys who played it really well.

Much of what has baseball has become is wonderful. It is truly a global sport, which is beautiful. And in growing older, it has reached back to its past, time and again, to recapture the best elements of its history.

These changes I believe would only serve to make its rather autonomous exhibition a greater spectacle still. The Midsummer Classic should be a classic played for fun and for the fans. It should not be played to play to the artificial pomp some of our society today craves.

It should stick to what it has historically been. And making these changes would help it do just that.

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