AL 4-3 NL (15 inn)

Homefield advantage in most sports is traditionally awarded to the team that performed the best throughout the season in their division, conference or league. But not in baseball. Nope, the Major League awards the advantage to the team representing the league that won a freakin' exhibition game that is awkwardly timed and usually features a great deal of reluctant participation. That's just freakin' great!

Years ago there was a tie game in the all-star game and, though no one died and no children were kept out of school, a great clatter rose throughout the land. The local radio gave everyone their chance to blame a draw in baseball for everything that had ever gone wrong in their lives. Do the fans really give a shit? Dude, these are the same fans that don't want Carmelo Anthony to play for his country so that he can save it all to be a Denver Nugget! (And you know good and well if Anthony ever wants to be a winner in his profession, he's got a much better shot with USA than with the Nuggets!) And does the commissioner actually have to cave into this kind of cultural pressure? Dude, he ignored steroids for over a decade, why can't he look the other way on this momentary spasm of nonsense?

I don't do overtime baseball. I will in the playoffs, maybe a regular season Indians game, but not at all in an exhibition game. This is exactly why making this game 'meaningful' is a foolish idea: what if that game goes a few more innings and Kazmir and Lidge end up throw 70-80 pitches on their days off? It might--might--seem worthwhile if Tampa and Philly end up in the World Series but if not then how can a team benefit from potentially injuring a rival pitcher? In a fucking exhibition game! Ludicrous! Silly! How can you make the game meaningful when you know good and well the best players will all be unavailable by the time its over? You start with the best players and the quality of play slowly deteriorates--even in an all-star game--as it wears on.

The game is meant to be a hoot, a goodwill exhibition where the players are motivated by bragging rights alone. Putting homefield advantage on it as some bogus way of making the game 'meaningful' misses the point that this particular game is supposed to be harmless. It’s a lark, a backdrop to the religious feast day commemorating the 'middle' of the baseball season. It’s a day off for the players and a tribute to the fans. No one needs it to solve the crisis in the Middle East! It can end in a tie--why is that a problem? Why do we need extra innings in a meaningless game? We don't, we never did! But giving Terry Francona the chance to run down Scott Kazmir's arm in a meaningless game with the Rays riding a 7-game losing streak strikes me as totally fuckin' bogus!

And besides, I didn't get to see the end of the game. (Soon enough I'll rail about the coming of instant replay but I'm gonna let that one marinate for another week or so)

World 3-0 USA
The futures game, on the other hand, I did watch and thoroughly enjoyed. I look forward to making this the game I look forward to every July rather than that silly show the big leaguers put on.

This one was a pitchers' duel, clearly the arms are better developed than the bats these days. We'll blame steroids but since last generation's pithcers were all just as juiced as the hitters, it seems to me this is probably a perfectly ordinary cyclical shift. The World scratched together a run in the 1st and added a 2-run rocket of Lin's bat (Red Sox prospect, the rich get richer) in the 7th to put it out of reach. I was struck that the World kept trying to take advantage of their speed even though they kept getting gunned down like clay pigeons. Frankly they weren't great baserunners: 1/5 stolen bases with 2 pickoffs--that's not good. Back-to-back pickoffs in the 3rd inning, don't believe I've ever seen that one before. As a Tribe fan I was pleased with Matt Laporta's effort, confident with the bat and flashed some nice leather over at 1st even though he's a natural LF, I'm ready to see that in the big show.