David Huzzard: Current All-Star Game format needs fixing

When does something become tradition? My wife and I recently had a big discussion about this. She is heading up to Maryland this weekend for our 1-year-old nephew's birthday party and she is tasked with baking a "smash cake." I had no idea what a "smash cake" was and asked her about it and she called it a tradition. I argued that it isn't old enough to be a tradition if it is a more recent thing. A Google search failed to answer how long the practice goes back and the debate was never settled.

The MLB All-Star Game deciding home field advantage in the World Series dates back to 2003. I did not think it was that long ago. I remember the tie and I remember the tie happening when I was in college. I also remember thinking it was stupid that the All-Star Game would decide anything other than pride, but by this time then-commissioner Bud Selig had already damaged the sanctity of the All-Star Game with interleague play. Making it count in and of itself was more unusual than it was outright bad, but the subsequent debates and discussions have been bad.

The All-Star Game has counted for 13 years. Is that enough to make it a tradition? There are young baseball fans that have only lived in a world where the All-Star Game counts, fans that want the team chosen to give their favorite team's league home field advantage in the World Series. The real issue isn't that the game counts. It is that the game counts and is selected and played like it doesn't. If this were a game that really meant something, the rosters might extend to 30 deep but no more than that and the starting nine, excluding the pitcher, would play the entire game.

That isn't how it is and the All-Star Game has an identity crisis. It counts, but the starting players are chosen by a fan vote and sometimes fans select the sixth best shortstop in the league over the best. And let's face it, players are chosen on a half-season sample. If the game counts, then fans got it right in choosing Buster Posey over Wilson Ramos, even though that isn't why it happened, and this brings in another problem with the All-Star Game. It is trying to be too many things.

What is the MLB All-Star Game? Is it a game played between separate leagues for pride? A tradition started because those players never had a chance to meet on the field of play outside the World Series and players never switched teams due to the reserve clause. Is it an exhibition game played for fun and as a reward for the players that won a fan vote or have had the best half season? Or is it a meaningful game that will help decide the outcome of the World Series? The problem is the All-Star Game is trying to be all of these things and it ends up being nothing more than what it truly is, a fun exhibition game.

That is right. The All-Star Game is awesome fun. It is a joy to watch two super teams play each other and see players that only play every three years play against each other. It doesn't matter that free agency has everyone switching leagues and that Bryce Harper and Mike Trout have played against each other in the regular season. Of all the All-Star Games, the MLB All-Star Game is closest to the real sport. The NHL didn't even try this year. They had a three-on-three tournament instead of anything close to the rules of regular season hockey. The Pro-Bowl is a joke that only gets high ratings because every sports bar in America has 15 TV's that never leave ESPN. And the NBA is just an offensive highlight show. When the MLB All-Stars take the field they will play a baseball game. It might be closer to a spring training baseball game but it is still a baseball game, played with the rules of baseball, and it is fun to watch no matter how much the commissioner's office has tried to ruin it.

David Huzzard blogs about the Nationals at Citizens of Natstown. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidHuzzard. His views appear here as part of MASNsports.com's season-long initiative of welcoming guest bloggers to our pages. All opinions expressed are those of the guest bloggers, who are not employed by MASNsports.com but are just as passionate about their baseball as our regular roster of writers.