2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game

It was a very exciting baseball game to watch this past Tuesday evening as the National League and the American League met and played in the 79th edition of the Midsummer Classic, the Major League All-Star Game. But it seems in this fan's mind that the managers have yet to figure it out as to how to manage this game to win.

Now this may seem as if I am second guessing or "Monday night quarterbacking," but this is what I told my kids the other night during the game. I said if I was manager I would not take Lance Berkman, Albert Pujols or Chipper Jones out of the game. If the powers that be in Major League Baseball (translation: Bud Selig and the FOX network) have decided that the All-Star game is going to determine what team has home field advantage in the World Series, and since this rule was made precisely because the game played in Milwaukee in 2002 went into extra innings in which all the players were used and the game resulted in a 7-7 tie, then why on Earth would the manager for the National League team lift the three best hitters in baseball, not just the National League (Chipper Jones, Albert Pujols and Lance Berkman), especially when the game was playing out to be a pitcher's duel? Statistically, it makes no sense whatsoever to have removed those three since they have shown themselves to be the best hitters in baseball. You needed hitters to win the game!

I recall many times during the 70s when the game supposedly did not matter that players such as Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Frank Robinson, Pete Rose and Roberto Clemente routinely played the entire game because they were the best players. It was not unusual at all for this to happen, which meant that sometimes some players did not play. It just seems ironic to me that in a time when the game supposedly did not matter the players played as if it did, and the managers managed as if it did. And now when an exhibition game is the determining factor in what team is awarded home field advantage for the World Series, the ultimate series that does matter, the managers still have not figured out how to manage to win, when it is not complicated at all: You use your best players, and you use them as long as they are needed. That means your starting pitcher pitches until he gets into trouble, just as you do each and every game of the baseball season. And if that means he throws a nine inning shut out, so be it.