National League 5, American League 1

The MLB MUST do one of the two following things to the game:

1.) Throw away the home field advantage incentive and strictly make it for fun. With than in mind, I still cannot stand all these guys withdrawing from the game who do not have legitimate reasons to do so. So to help combat that, if players want to receive any kind of all-star bonus incentive, they must show up to the game and be in roster eligible to play. If they don’t end up playing just because they do not get into the game, so be it, but they cannot simply do what Jeter and A-Rod did and just say, “Eh, I’ll skip, but I’ll still take my bonus money, than you very much!”
-If you are to throw away the home field advantage, the MLB can continue to allow the fan vote to determine the starters of the game, I don’t have any problem with that
-Also in this scenario, continue to keep the rule that at least one representative must come from each team

2.) The MLB continues to keep the home field incentive and tries to maintain a somewhat serious tone to the game, but under the following circumstances:
-Fan voting can stay. At it’s heart, the all-star game really is about the fans, but with that in mind, their selections do not automatically equate to starting or even seeing any playing time at all. It’ll just be a nice way to keep the fans involved.
-Allow BASEBALL WRITERS ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA to select the teams. Yes, the BBWAA. Not coaches, not managers, not GMs, not players, but the most established baseball writers that we have around. Why? As we saw from this year, having players and the teams manager select players doesn’t turn out well, it’s pretty evident that these guys do not watch enough baseball beyond their own teams to make fair and legitimate selections. I wouldn’t mind general managers, but there’s something about that which seems very “behind closed doors,” that would involve a lot of calls to each other, etc… With having established writers do it, I think you hit a homerun. You get guys who live and breath baseball, watch a wide array of teams, and you would also get a good mix of guys who know the game well both from the classic naked eye talent judging standpoint, as well as the sabermetrics view. I’m looking at the list right now of current BBWAA members, wouldn’t it be nice to have a selection committee of lets say: Ira Berkow, Ron Blum, Thomas Boswell, Mike Dodd, Peter Gammons, Pedro Gomez, Ken Gurnick, Jon Heyman, Dejan Kovacevic, Tim Kurkjian, Keith Law, Rob Neyer, Buster Olney, Ken Rosenthal, Peter Schmuck, Dan Shaughnessy, Joel Sherman, Tom Verducci, and that’s just to name some of the guys in the BBWAA
-As for the one representative from every team rule, I actually have always enjoyed it, I don’t why. I guess it adds a nice universal feel to the all-star game, but if that’s a cut that must be made, I can live with it

The biggest reason is I get to see the best against the best. I want to see the best though and that’s why I get po’d when dudes decide to skip it. If I ruled the world, the guys who decide to skip the game would be eliminated from future consideration to the game unless they had a really good excuse.

It’s still the best of the four All-Star games. For the other three major sports, they don’t have their full playbooks, they don’t play at full speed and they don’t bother really playing defense so the game ends up looking like a scrimmage. You never see something like Bautista’s sliding catch in the other sports’ All-Star games.

I do think that MLB should make a set incentive clause for All-Star appearances with bigger incentives for players who show up or for those who start the game. Not the guys elected to start the game, the guys who actually start it.