For years, baseball players in the American League and National League treated the All-Star Game as a quasi-playoff game. There was nothing on the line other than bragging rights. But for the old-timers that was more than enough.
Now, with free agency sending players back and forth to both leagues like a pinball, that animosity has faded. The game is still a spectacle. But its outcome became such a non-issue that Major League Baseball actually added home-field advantage in the World Series as a perk for the winning team.
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“You can make it for the World Series. You can make it for anything you want to,” said ESPN baseball analyst Joe Morgan. “But the players will always be the ones to decide how the game is played. And I think the last couple of years it has been played competitively.”
Morgan noted that pride in representing a league had long been lost. The image of his National League teammates playing the game all out — of Willie Mays celebrating joyously after yet another victory — had faded. One way to get it back? It’s already happened. The American League has won the event 11 times in the last 12 years with the other result a tie. Considering no pro athlete likes to lose, Morgan said, the competitive side of the National League players has returned on its own over the last three years — each game decided by one run.
