As Barack Obama loosens up his arm tonight, he will become the first president since Gerald Ford in 1976 to throw out the first pitch at Major League Baseball’s All-Star game. He will kick off tonight’s Midsummer classic in St. Louis for what is always a star-studded night for Major League Baseball. Tonight marks the 80th All-Star game when the game’s best players come together at Busch Stadium to represent their respective league and team.
The All-Star game used to be a simple exhibition game between the best players from the National League and the best from the American League. That all changed in 2003 when baseball introduced a “ this time it counts” campaign and subsequently decided that the winning league would receive home field advantage in the World Series. This decision came on the tails of the 2002 All-Star game fiasco in Milwaukee which ended in a 7-7 tie after 11 innings. This marked a very embarrassing event for baseball and Commissioner Bud Selig. Fans were outraged and heavily criticized Selig for the final decision to stop the game after 11 innings. In attempt to add some spark to the game, Selig decided that starting into 2003 the All-Star game would “count”.
Proponents of the change argue that it does add some incentive to the game and makes the players take the game a lot more seriously when so much is on the line. Baseball purists and other opponents of the move point to the fact that the root of the game is an Exhibition Game. For the All-Star game to decide something so important such as home-field advantage and simultaneously the World Series having a major outcome on the World Series is ludicrous in the eyes of many sportswriters and fans alike. The fact is players from last place teams in July can affect the outcome in October, when the best from the National and American league meet. Every year many of the game’s best players skip the game for personal reasons or are injured throughout the season and cannot play thus skewing the point of rewarding the dominant league. Over the past six seasons since this rule has been implemented, there has not been a deciding Game 7 of the World Series; yet when that does happen how will you feel if your favorite team has to play Game 7 on the road as a result of the outcome of the All-Star game?
The consensus is that even entering the seventh game to be played deciding home-field advantage, fans are still upset and angry with Selig and view his rule as very unnecessary. After carefully mining the blogosphere Zeta Buzz tells us that 75% of fans view the home-field advantage rule in a negative light while only 25% support the decision. TV ratings tell a similar story as they have not raised the dramatic spike in interest that baseball hoped for. As you watch the game tonight be mindful that your team’s World Series aspirations could be riding on a player from the Washington Nationals or Kansas City Royals, I know I will- Go American League.
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