As much as it seems like baseball's All-Star game shouldn't matter, there are times when it looks like the spectacle it was originally intended to be. If you can get past the fact that it's an exhibition game played in the middle of a season that players sometimes actually try to miss, the idea of seeing the best take on the best is undeniably riveting. Curt Schilling vs. Ichiro? Done. Mariano Rivera vs. Barry Bonds? Could have happened, if not for some questionable substitution patterns by managers Bob Brenly and Joe Torre. With the best players in the world playing the only game in town, the All-Star game could be one of the best games in all of sports.
That's what makes it so maddening when things go awry like they did Tuesday night. The American League had completed its comeback and forced the game into extra innings at a 7-7 tie. Would-be World Series goat Byung-Hyun Kim continued his struggles with large stages, blowing the lead for the NL before Lance Berkman, who looks like your average beer-league softball player, put them back on top. Then the AL answered back, with Omar Vizquel, one of the plethora of shortstops at Torre's disposal, tripling in a run to knot the score. Extra baseball with the best players on earth? Sounds great, right?
Wrong. Because pitchers don't like the extra strain on their arms that the All-Star game provides, causing players such as Tom Glavine, Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez to bow out, Brenly and Torre found themselves a little short on pitching. (The fact that Torre selected every AL shortstop short of Neifi Perez probably didn't help the roster crunch, either.) Suddenly, Freddy Garcia and Vicente Padilla were the only arms left. So, discounting the old adage that a tie is like kissing your sister, Brenly, Torre and commissioner Bud Selig decided to save the players' arms for the pennant race and puckered up. Game over, final score 7-7, and a whole lot of angry fans wanted answers.
The thing is, Brenly and Torre probably made the right call for the situation. Lou Piniella and Larry Bowa, who manage Garcia and Padilla during the season, didn't want to see their stars risking their health for a glorified exhibition game. However, short of putting position players on the mound and risking both injury and embarrassment, leaving the pitchers in was the only option if the game was to continue. So what was a manager to do?
The problem wasn't with what Brenly and Torre did to save their pitchers' arms, it was how they got in that position in the first place. No pitcher for either team threw more than two innings, and each team used their full complement of players. Some players did get three at-bats in the game, but only because of the two extra innings played before the stoppage.
That kind of player use is exactly the problem with the All-Star game today. The mentality of the managers is that of a youth-league baseball coach - everybody gets to play. I'm surprised that nobody was enforcing the "one at-bat and two innings in the field" rule from the commissioner's box.
If the managers are set on letting everyone play in the game, baseball should take the youth-league mentality a step further and allow unlimited substitutions. For a game that is meaningless enough for players to either skip or put in their two innings and leave, does it really matter if Joe Torre puts Barry Zito on the mound for a second time? It may not be Major League Baseball as we know it, but neither is the "play two innings and go home" mentality that we have today. Ted Williams, the man for whom the All-Star MVP award is named, would play all nine innings in the All-Star game, and even got injured in one contest. Contrast that with Tuesday night's game, featuring the five-headed AL shortstop monster that ensured that Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez wouldn't have to exert themselves too much.
On the flip side, if the managers can't make unlimited substitutions, they should start playing to win instead of getting everybody into the game. Would anyone at Miller Park have gotten angry if Randy Winn or Robert Fick hadn't gotten into the game, or if some of the pitchers had been saved? Neither solution is perfect - some Detroit and Tampa Bay fans would be angry that their stars didn't get any playing time, and managers don't like to see their pitchers get overworked, but either solution is better than the present situation. The All-Star game is baseball's second-biggest stage, and the game's fans deserve better than a tie.
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