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wombat_sochoJoePos has some thoughts about it, which are of course worth reading, even if I don't agree with a lot of his points.
Probably the biggest bone I have to pick with him is the notion that before The Prince Of Insufficient Light unilaterally decided that the winner of the game would get home-field advantage in the World Series, the game was meaningless. I'm sorry, but that's just nuts. The game has never counted as part of the season, but it has long been used as one of the yardsticks to determine who the great players are, and in the past the proceeds were paid into the players' pension fund. So there's that.
If we're going to take the game seriously and attach some significance to it, we ought to treat it more seriously. Giving the managers a 33-man roster to play with is just nuts; you can't do that in the regular season, and you shouldn't be able to do it in the All-Star game. Vote for 33, sure, but stipulate that the managers have to pick 25 starters and play the game with just those guys. If it goes into extra innings, fine, call in the reserves, but otherwise, the eight reserves get to hang out and watch the game from the clubhouse. There also ought to be limits on the number of players from any one team, and perhaps a bar on the managers picking their own players.
I agree that one of the things that's diminished the attraction of the game is interleague play, but until the Astros are shanghaied into the AL (to replace the Brewers, who never should have been allowed to switch into the NL) we're going to have to keep that around, so there's no help for it. The same goes for the widespread availability of games on the Internet and TV, but to a lesser extent.
Odds are I probably won't be watching the game next Tuesday night, but we'll see.
Probably the biggest bone I have to pick with him is the notion that before The Prince Of Insufficient Light unilaterally decided that the winner of the game would get home-field advantage in the World Series, the game was meaningless. I'm sorry, but that's just nuts. The game has never counted as part of the season, but it has long been used as one of the yardsticks to determine who the great players are, and in the past the proceeds were paid into the players' pension fund. So there's that.
If we're going to take the game seriously and attach some significance to it, we ought to treat it more seriously. Giving the managers a 33-man roster to play with is just nuts; you can't do that in the regular season, and you shouldn't be able to do it in the All-Star game. Vote for 33, sure, but stipulate that the managers have to pick 25 starters and play the game with just those guys. If it goes into extra innings, fine, call in the reserves, but otherwise, the eight reserves get to hang out and watch the game from the clubhouse. There also ought to be limits on the number of players from any one team, and perhaps a bar on the managers picking their own players.
I agree that one of the things that's diminished the attraction of the game is interleague play, but until the Astros are shanghaied into the AL (to replace the Brewers, who never should have been allowed to switch into the NL) we're going to have to keep that around, so there's no help for it. The same goes for the widespread availability of games on the Internet and TV, but to a lesser extent.
Odds are I probably won't be watching the game next Tuesday night, but we'll see.
