It didn't really count

All-Star Game a real classic, but still just an exhibition

CHICAGO -- Roger Clemens threw 15 pitches in his All-Star farewell Tuesday. The guy worked harder getting to the game than he did in it.

The leading vote-getter in this year's Midsummer Classic, St. Louis' Albert Pujols, was done for the night by the top of the fifth inning. Hideki Matsui, the wildly popular Japanese outfielder who plays for the New York Yankees, lasted two plate appearances. Neither of the starting pitchers saw the third inning.

In fact, by the time Tuesday's All-Star Game at U.S. Cellular Field zipped through the fifth inning, nine pitchers had already trudged their way onto the field. Thankfully, most did it between innings.

You don't see that in regular games. You don't see that in Games That Really Count.

Not to belabor a point that has been belabored to the point of belabor blowout, but Major League Baseball's All-Star Game is not a regular game. No one plays it like a regular game. No one manages it like one.

And no one -- and we're talking to you, baseball officials -- ought to pretend it has that kind of importance.

It can be a good game -- Tuesday's was a beauty, a real classic -- but to think of it as anything other than an All-Star Game, to pass it off as anything more than an exhibition, is still wrong.

The American League won Tuesday's 74th All-Star Game, beating the National League, 7-6, on a two-run home run by Texas third baseman Hank Blalock in the bottom of the eighth inning. With it, thanks to a new rule that Major League Baseball instituted for the game, the Americans now have home-field advantage in the World Series.

But as we hear Baseball crow about the beauty of the game and the success of their brilliant World Series tie-in idea, let's remember the words of John Smoltz, who didn't even get into this game.

"The game was played the same this year as it was last year," he said. "I don't see anything different. I really don't."

They might have thought a little differently on the winning side of the stadium, where AL manager Mike Scioscia talked about the aggressiveness his team showed, the hit-and-run plays he called, the seriousness with which his guys took this game. Scioscia even argued with an ump, for crying out loud.

But, truthfully, even over on the AL side, this was not much different than last year's 7-7 tie that riled so many purists. No different, in fact.

"At times, I think we were more conscious of late-inning matchups than we might have been if it were more of an exhibition game ..." Scioscia said. "[But] I don't think it was any different.

The fact is, you would have been hard-pressed to find a player or coach or pretty much anyone in the game who felt that this was the all-out, take-no-prisoners, This Time It Counts Because of the World Series Thing that baseball officials and FOX television made it out to be.

It's an All-Star Game. No matter how much Baseball tries to do with it, it's still an All-Star Game. It's managed differently than a regular-season game. It's played differently. It's pitched differently. It's always pitched differently.

"No matter what," agrees Jason Giambi, the New York Yankees slugger who took a fastball from Houston closer Billy Wagner and slammed a homer in the bottom of the seventh. Giambi says he's never been brushed back in an All-Star Game. You know that's happened a lot in Games That Really Count.

"You could see that in the distraught in [San Francisco pitcher] Jason Schmidt's face, when he hit Edgar [Martinez, the Seattle DH]. You don't want to hurt anybody in this game.

None of this is to say that the game was played without intensity. It was played with plenty of it. These guys are competitors. It's not to say it didn't mean anything to these guys. It did.

It's not to suggest it was a bad game. It wasn't. It was great theater watching the AL come back. It was great baseball to see Blalock connect off stud closer Eric Gagne in the eighth. We all held our breaths as Atlanta's Rafael Furcal flied out to the warning track to end the game.

But when you use 15 pitchers in a game, including seven starters in relief roles, when you send 37 position players to the plate, when you see pitchers challenging hitters instead of smartly pitching around them, or throwing over the plate when they live by pitching inside, that ought to tell you that this doesn't really count. Not like a real game.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Not a thing. It can be, in fact, rather enjoyable. It was this year. It was last year.

"A lot of people try to make it more than it is," said Atlanta's Gary Sheffield. "But it was the same. I think it should be fun for the fans. And it was."

The All-Star Game was a rousing success Tuesday. It was the second great All-Star Game in a row. Two games decided by a total of one run. That's pretty close.

Tuesday's game was so good it may even help ease the pain of last year's mess in Milwaukee for many.

And, maybe, that's the thing that counts the most.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

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