What’s Next For All-Star Games?

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game isn’t what it used to be with the end of interleague play. But it’s future may lie in the lower levels of sports.

The baseball All-Star Game is still the best All-Star Game.

But it’s not what it used to be.

On the positive, it still may be the only thing where fans really get to have a say-so when they get to vote on their favorite players to make the teams. The voting may be rigged because it’s hardly one vote to a fan, and for that matter a vote may be cast early in the balloting process for a player whose production tails off in the weeks that follow, making his candidacy unworthy.

It represents a de-facto midway point to the regular season. It supposedly tells everyone who is having a good season. It’s a celebration of baseball for whatever city lands the game.

But interleague play has destroyed it. The rivalry between the two leagues when the result of the game meant so much is gone.

It hasn’t devolved the way the Pro Bowl has, where players on the two teams in the Super Bowl are now excluded and the game often resembles touch football.

The identity of the American and National Leagues is now reduced to history and which league rapes the game with the designated hitter rule. Frankly, if baseball’s All-Star Game is about getting players in, it would be a good idea to NOT have a DH in the All-Star Game so more players can appear as pinch-hitters.