My Pitch

Please, no more All-Star Games

By Alex Sponseller
Posted 7/17/18

The 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game takes place tonight in Washington DC and will continue one of the nation's most historic sporting events. From 2003-2016 the All-Star Game determined which league was granted home-field advantage in the World

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My Pitch

Please, no more All-Star Games

Posted

The 2018 Major League Baseball All-Star Game takes place tonight in Washington DC and will continue one of the nation’s most historic sporting events.

From 2003-2016 the All-Star Game determined which league was granted home-field advantage in the World Series. The MLB changed the rule back to its original state last year when it decided to make the game’s outcome totally and utterly meaningless.

The large majority, and I mean the very large majority of people detested the fact that the All-Star Game used to hold so much importance when it came to the postseason.

I get it, I honestly do. Players aren’t all that engaged, better teams sometimes got deprived of playing a game 7 at home on the sports’ biggest stage, and the stars were forced to play another game and risk injury.

I used to love the MLB All-Star game as a child. You got to see the biggest stars in the game on the same field, the same dugout. You also had the Home Run Derby the night before (which has also become a yearly dud).

However, as I grew older, the fact that the game carried some significance was the only reason why I even bothered checking my phone for the final score at all.

Baseball itself has become a nightly snooze fest. The average game has soared to three hours, the younger generation is bored, and TV ratings are plummeting. The last thing that the MLB needs is to wet itself when 50 of its best players are on national TV together at the same time.

I’ll admit, I don’t have too many reasons why the MLB All-Star Game should decide home-field advantage … but the reason that I do have is so great that it is a no-brainer in my eyes.

Look at the NFL’s Pro Bowl … another annual disaster.

The players don’t care, run, care, block, care, or tackle … did I also mention that they don’t care?

The NBA All-Star Game is also a joke. Fans get all geeked up over the dunk competition, but don’t even realize that the All-Star Game itself is just that, a silly dunk competition.

Don’t even get me started with the NHL All-Star Game, I beg you.

Personally, I think playing any sort of All-Star game is stupid. I’m all for naming All-Stars though. The best players in sports deserve to be recognized and oftentimes All-Star appearances are points of discussion in contract negotiations.

But to force the players to participate in a charity game where the league is the charity of choice? No thank you.

The MLB has made so many poor decisions over the last decade and has slowly fallen to the bottom of the four major sports. The league desperately needs to stop the bleeding and offer something that the other businesses don’t have.

The MLB used to have just that in the All-Star Game. The MLB held the lone All-Star Game that was worth checking in on during the commercial break of your weekly sitcom or during your pit stop to the bathroom.

Now that the MLB did away with its one winning product, I’ll go back to doing the things that I enjoy more than watching the All-Star Game. Things like changing my oil, mowing my lawn, going to the dentist, serving jury duty … maybe I’ll even go hang out with David Price and his mother-in-law.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from saying that I ever enjoyed the MLB All-Star Game. But the way that I saw it, if the money-starved MLB felt so compelled to force it on us, then it might as well have had something on the line.

The MLB All-Star Game is back to being totally pointless. Do yourself a favor and don’t watch it. I miss the good old days when it was the best of the four All-Star games, or in other words, the lesser waste of time.

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