The Magic of MLB All-Star Weekend is Gone

This could be nostalgia talking, but MLB All-Star weekend used to be an absolute spectacle that I felt was must watch television. Every single summer I’d record the “Red Carpet Show”, watch Chris Berman yell “back” for the 72nd time in 5 minutes during the Home Run Derby, and then watch the Mid-Summer Classic, Mountain Dew and barbecue in hand, on a beautiful summer night in July.

Major League Baseball’s All Star break is the only point in the sports calendar where none of the four major leagues are playing games. The opportunity created by the lack of competitive intrigue alone puts baseball in an opportunistic spot no other major professional league has the luck of being in. For a full week, or at least four days, baseball should take over America.

So why, may I ask, did SportsCenter AM open this morning with talks of NFL Training Camp and NBA Summer League? Because despite all the efforts to speed up the game, all the “efforts” to market individual players, and the social media overhaul, baseball is boring.

Don’t get me wrong I love the game. I’ve been obsessed with the interworking of the New York Mets since I could say “Lastings Milledge” but somehow, someway, any previous appeal of baseball’s biggest weekend has evaded me. Last night I watched the fourth quarter of Sixers vs. Trail Blazers on NBA TV instead of the Home Run Derby. I cared more about Jared McCain hoisting shots against Donovan Clingan in a meaningless game than baseball’s premiere event.

The example of choosing Summer League games over the Derby is a bit extreme, mainly because I’m a college basketball sicko that subscribes to the ESPN, Hulu, Disney + bundle mainly to watch mid-majors go at it at 11:00 PM eastern, but the significance of my decision points towards an overall theme that is concerning for baseball. All Star Weekend is not fun anymore.

Like I said at the beginning of this blog, this could just be me getting older and losing the “childlike wonder” of it all, but I’d like to think I share the opinion of most fans on this specific take. With all of my grumpiness out in the open, I will say I do think the Arizona Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo made the right call in electing Paul Skenes as his opener in the game. For at least an inning, I – and probably most baseball fans – will be tuning into the game to see the 22-year-old face the best of the American League.

Unfortunately some of the AL has already seen Skenes despite him pitching less than 100 innings in the bigs. I’ll save you all from a possibly delusional diatribe about how common inter league play is also ruining the sport by just saying that it’s a damn shame. With the “NBAification” of the baseball schedule, Rob Manfred has turned a once great exhibition into another boring All Star Event. And there my friends lies the issue. When you dilute the meaning of leagues and divisions, you dilute meaning in sport. Nobody gives a (insert profane filler word here) about the NBA regular season because nothing matters. That is what baseball is becoming with the addition of playoff spots and the diminishment of meaningful, divisional games.

I know I said I’ll save you the rant but I want to get this across. The All Star Game, like every other All Star Game, sucks now because Major League Baseball is trying to duplicate the formula of other successful sports that frankly have a better product than they do. That process may be helping fans see their favorite players slightly more often, but it is killing the very fabric made baseball special following the “National Agreement” in 1903. The American League challenged the National League for baseball supremacy at the end of the 19th century. It got so bad the senior circuit caved and recognized the American League as a professional baseball league. The two then agreed to send their best representatives to the World Series each year to battle for supremacy. There was bad blood. It meant something.

Now we have a jumbled mess of teams that may as well play under one umbrella. No one cares about regional supremacy so why should fans? Even if the fans wanted to care, they can’t watch 30% of the games because of blackout restrictions. MLB is trying to stay relevant by duplicating a modern approach to scheduling done by sports simply more interesting than baseball. This pivot has killed the All-Star Game and it’ll kill the league before too long.

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