Swing and a miss

Bud Selig tries to cover a goof -- with another gaffe

Before we get started, I want to salute the best of the many PR releases that rolled in around the Super Bowl. A few days before the game Domino's Pizza issued a statement that outlined typical customer trends on Super Sunday, the company's busiest day of the year. It read, in part: "By the end of the night we see a higher sales increase in the city of the winning team versus the city of the losing team. Both cities begin the evening high."

Guess that explains why everybody needs some pizza.

With temperatures in many places finally creeping up above omigoditssoeffincold degrees, we finally have an excuse to talk about a summer game. Now, I'm not saying everyone had the munchies before Major League Baseball owners voted to give the league that wins the All-Star Game home-field advantage in the World Series, but ... very weird result. The owners agreed unanimously to support commissioner Bud Selig's proposition to award an extra Series home game to the league that wins the All-Star game.

This is unlikely to become reality, though, because there's little chance the players will go for it. It's an absurd proposition, after all. You're taking an exhibition, an event surrounded by home-run hitting contests and rock 'n' roll cameos, and trying to lift it to the level of the most important games in the sport. Absurd.

Trust me. The Yankees do not want a Fall Classic home date hinging on whether Pedro Martinez gets the better of Curt Schilling for an inning in July.

It's not that Selig's proposal is unfair. The current format in which the leagues alternate Series home field each year is also luck-based. If baseball wants to recognize the importance of home field -- and it is no small advantage; the team that plays Games 1 and 2 at home has won 18 of the last 22 Series -- it could follow the advice of Tom Glavine. The Mets pitcher suggests giving home field to whichever team had a better record during the season.

Or the could just leave it as is. Perhaps the reason the owners agreed to the proposal was to cover up Selig's disastrous decision to end last year's game when it was tied at 7-7. The game is should be something of a lark but it does need enough competitive juice to make a tie game unthinkable. Not even Sunday softball games, basement ping-pong matches or family rounds of tiddlywinks end in ties.

Fact is, baseball's is by far the best All-Star game of the major sports -- as will be clear over the next 10 days as the NFL, NHL and NBA each stage their All-Star events.

The NFL's Pro Bowl, set for this Sunday, is a longstanding joke that many of the best players desperately want to avoid. The game is a tremendous anticlimax coming so soon after the Super Bowl, and the players' and coaches' main challenge is to ensure no one gets hurt. Flag football would be a better alternative.

The NHL's All-Star game improves this year because the league has abandoned its awful North America vs. the World format and is returning to Eastern Conference-vs.-Western Conference matchup. But it's still a game void of checking or defense, and thin on crisp passing. Said one NHL goalie this week, "The best thing is to be selected but then get hurt do you don't have to play."

The NBA's All-Star game shares many of the same problems as the NHL's. Not much defense. One-on-one battles never develop because defenders just let people fly by.

But baseball's midseason classic has been the exception -- before Selig and Co. fouled up the public's perception of it, anyway. The game is played in midweek on a summer night just after July 4. The time is right for festivities. And even though interleague play has diluted some of the intrigue, fans still have the opportunity to see a lot of compelling and unusual matchups. Baseball is not as physical a game as football, basketball or hockey, so players don't have to alter the way they ordinarily play.

Randy Johnson is still going to try to strike out Alex Rodriguez. And when Mike Piazza's batting against Mariano Rivera he's still going to try to get the winning hit. Andruw Jones is still going to cover acres in center field.

If Selig wants to cover his tuchus, he should instruct All-Star managers that they're not obligated to use every single player. That way, should the game go into extra innings, there'll still be plenty of pitchers and pinch-hitters available. The players won't mind either. Sure, it's nice to get an All-Star at-bat, but the point of the weekend is to mingle with other stars, get a few photo ops, eat from a few All-Star spreads and get into the Home Run Derby.

It's a good thing the players association is almost certain to reject the owners proposal. Allowing the All-Star game result to impact the World Series would only make Selig's mistake worse.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Kostya Kennedy takes sides each week at CNNSI.com.

 

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