Today’s Big Winner: The Boston Red Sox

This past weekend I was watching the Red Sox – Tigers Game 6 with some Red Sox fans. After the final out, there was the hooping and hollering you’d expect. Then one friend remarked how close this Cardinals – Red Sox World Series was going to be, and asked the group who had home-field advantage.

There was a pause, and then I said: “Well, who won the All-Star Game this year?”

Every one of us broke out in laughter. We couldn’t help it. It was such a ridiculous thing to say.

After a second, we all remembered that Mariano Rivera had won the MVP, so that must have meant the AL had won, so four of the games would be played at Fenway. The Red Sox fans cheered and laughed at their luck.

Because what a stupid way to decide home-field advantage in the biggest baseball series of the year.

An exhibition game played months earlier, a game that was for all intents and purposes a 3-hour Mariano Rivera celebration/pageant, could decide the World Series. How is this still happening?

We know why Bud Selig decided to do this. In the late ’90s and early ’00s, he All-Star Game was turning into something less than a preseason game and something more closely akin to a Harlem Globetrotters game. Starting pitchers were taken out quickly to ensure all the relievers got in the game.

There were pinch hitters coming in at random times and guys playing out of position. The game was played at half-speed, as no one wanted to pull a hamstring diving for a ground ball in the dirt of a meaningless game.

This all culminated in 2002, when the game in Milwaukee went to 11 innings and, with the score tied 7-7, both teams ran out of pitchers. Bud Selig had to call the game a tie, like an umpire in a little league game when it’s getting dark out, and everyone lost their mind.

So Selig swung hard the other way. You want the game to mean something? We’ll make it mean something! He decided that the All-Star game would be played to decide who had home-field advantage in the World Series. They’ll have to take it seriously now, was the general consensus.

And the All-Star Game did get marginally better. Managers stopped using all their pitchers as quickly as possible. Starters stayed in a little longer. But here was the thing: now you had a slightly better but still totally random game played between two made-up, assembled teams deciding home-field advantage in the World Series.

It’s craziness. How do the Cardinals feel this week, knowing they might have to play in Fenway four times, because of a random mid-season game played between two fake teams, a game where the NL batters were all but bowing down and applauding Mariano Rivera as he threw cutters past them?

End this charade. Make it so the team with the best regular-season record gets home-field advantage during the World Series, and every year, before the All-Star game, sit down with the managers and explain to them in crystal-clear terms that if they run out of pitchers and the game ends in a tie so help me god there will be major problems for their teams and their loved ones and everyone they’ve ever met.