Andrew Schrauben

Having stayed up until 2am last night this morning to watch the entirety of the 2008 MLB All-Star Game, I better make it worth my while and share some insight from my bleary mind. For those of you wise enough to get a good night's sleep, the game lasted 15 innings before the tie was broken, giving the American League a 4-3 victory that awards home field advantage to whichever AL team reaches the World Series.

Yes, you read that right - an exhibition game that impacts the results of baseball's crowning event. Why would the MLB do something so silly? To avoid something even sillier - an All-Star game that nobody cares about.

Tell a professional athlete that winning doesn't matter and the athlete won't show up, choosing instead to rest his worn out body for the remaining half of a season that does matter. Tell a fan that the players don't care, and the fan won't pay money to watch the event. So what to do?

After the 2002 All-Star game embarrassment (that ended in a tie after just 11 innings when both teams ran out of pitchers) the MLB decided to put the World Series home field advantage at stake in hopes that the players would care enough to show up and play hard, despite the slight risk of injury that any sport entails. The managers, it was hoped, would save enough pitchers in reserve to go the distance no matter how long the game lasted.

It just doesn't work that way. Pitching takes such a toll on the arm that many All-Star hurlers will adjust their usage before and/or after the game to accomodate the extra stress. Regular season games are played just two days before and two days after the All-Star game, giving pitchers little time to recover.

Most starting pitchers are limited to around 100 pitches per start - more than that might increase the risk of injury. Consider that the Milwaukee Brewers were so desperate for quality pitching that they traded their top prospect for a stud starter, CC Sabathia, just a week ago. Yet their staff ace, Ben Sheets, tossed 42 pitches yesterday. Should the Brewers be forced to sacrifice half a game of ace pitching while in the thick of a playoff race?

Milwaukee's division rival, the Chicago Cubs, saw three of their best pitchers throw 57 pitches combined. That almost seems fair until you realize that the St. Louis Cardinals - in the playoff race with the Brewers and Cubs - saw its hurlers throw zero pitches because none of them were good enough to be All-Stars.

In truth, the All-Star game will never be fair - after all, due to the whimsical nature of fan voting many of MLB's best players don't even get invited. Fundamentally the All-Star game is still an exhibition, so I wish baseball would stop pretending that "This One Counts" (the pleadingly sappy official motto of the 2003 contest) and instead come up with a solution along the lines of "We Care" because that's all that matters for an exhibition.

My proposal is to run the All-Star game as a charity contest:
-- Each player voted into the game selects a charity to represent.
-- MLB lines up corporate sponsors to ante up a significant pot of cash.
-- Players on the winning team split the cash as donations made in their name to their chosen charity.

Further, bonuses could be handed out, such as:
-- An "MVP sponsor" gives a extra bonus to the charity of the player who wins the MVP;
-- Additional sponsors could hand out bonuses for players hitting home runs or pitchers getting strikeouts;
-- The home run derby could have "jackpot" bullseye targets in the bleachers that could earn extra donations if struck.

And so on. If a player wants to back out of the game to go fishing instead, he'll have to endure the boos of fans for turning his back on a charity. Rather than being a physical burden, it would be an emotional honor for a player to compete.

Since the game has zero impact on regular season or post-season games, there's no need to drag it on for extra innings because something affecting the players' professional future is at stake. Instead a tiebreaker can be used - remember, it's just an exhibition put on for the fans. Some have suggested that a home-run derby can break a tie, but that's rather anti-climatic.

An exciting tiebreaker would be if the game is tied after nine innings then each subsequent inning starts with the bases loaded. The highlight of last night was when the AL loaded the bases in the bottom of the 10th inning with nobody out (albeit due to two errors and a walk) but failed to score a run as Aaron Cook induced three straight ground ball outs, getting two force outs at home plate.

If the current version of the All-Star game is so ho-hum, why did I watch? Because I'm a die hard baseball fan without cable TV, so I watch any televised game I can. Amanda is a baseball fan, too, but she decided to count sheep instead of innings. Fans don't care about World Series home field advantage in July. Fans do care about seeing their favorite players together on one field as they exhibition the skills that make them such beloved athletes.