Baseball's All-Star Game is in Need of a Major Fix. Here's What They Should Do.

I love everything about the MLB All-Star festivities. I love the spectacle of the Home Run Derby, the tradition of the “Midsummer Classic,” and the one All-Star game that is actually a competitive game between the best players in the world. At the same time, I know that I am in the minority. Despite the fact that baseball seemingly has the perfect formula for an All-Star Game, ratings have plummeted, and what was once one of the premier annual sporting events has almost become an afterthought. Baseball’s All-Star Game is in need of major changes if the sport wants to win back fans and once again make the All-Star Game one of the most important events on the sports calendar.

The first Major League All-Star Game took place in Chicago in 1933 and was the first of its kind. While there had previously been exhibitions between the greatest players in various sports leagues, the idea of making the event annual was still novel. Indeed, the first All-Star Game was supposed to be another one of these one-off events, intended to coincide with the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The game was was placed on July 6 to be a sort of conclusion to the Fair’s 4th of July festivities. Now, in 1933 this wasn’t much of an issue. In fact, it actually made a lot of sense at the time, not just because of the schedule of the Fair. No one was worrying about ratings because television was in its infancy and the game wasn’t even televised. The primary concern was over how they could draw the most people to the ballpark. It made sense to put it at the beginning of July because summer was just in full swing, and people were looking to cap their 4th of July week. What’s more, attendance was going to be high either way. In an era where the only way to see players was in person, fans jumped at the chance to see all of the game’s brightest stars in person, especially considering interleague play was still 65 years away.

To the surprise of no one, the game was a resounding success, so much so that it became an annual event, and the “Midsummer Classic” became a national summer tradition. However, as the decades wore on, the definition of putting on a successful event started to change.. It was no longer going to sell itself and as television became more accessible it increasingly became about getting as many people as possible to watch, and the All-Star game started losing its popularity. You see, July and August are the two worst television months of the year. This is because people are increasingly on the move during the summer, and are straying farther away from their routines during the year. More families are traveling, and more kids are going to sleepaway camps. When you add in the fact that summer blockbusters can now be streamed as part of family movie night, there are simply not as many people watching TV during the summer. This is an accepted fact in the TV industry, and it’s common knowledge that a show getting placed during the summer season is a death-knell and a sign of impending cancellation or lack of network support. In the NBA, one of the biggest reasons for the sharp decline in the Finals ratings is simply that due to the COVID-delayed season, they are now being played in July instead of June. As TV’s entered every American home, this phenomenon has played out in the All-Star Game. The 20 year period from 1980-2000 saw All-Star viewership be cut in more than half, with a similar decrease occurring over the following 20 years.

Beyond the fact that the game is played in the middle of the summer, the fact that it is also during the middle of the week is pure lunacy. It’s common knowledge in sports that a premiere primetime event should be played during the weekend. It’s why the NBA has an All-Star weekend and the NFL moved its premiere weekly primetime game from Monday Night to Sunday Night. And yet the MLB continues to insist on turning its premier event showcasing the game’s biggest stars into simply another weeknight broadcast, rather than a major television event. In fact, if you were to ask a TV executive what would be the worst time to schedule a major primetime event, he may very well say a Tuesday night in the middle of July. Baseball is essentially holding on to an archaic schedule designed around a World’s Fair the occurred nearly a century ago for no other reason than “It’s what we’ve always done.” This makes the game inaccessible to kids across the country, whether they are someone like myself who was at sleepaway camp for every All-Star game during their childhood, or whether they simply aren’t allowed to stay up that late during the week. During a time in which baseball is trying to reach out to younger generations, they are essentially saying “Let the kids play, but we’re also going to literally make it as hard as possible for kids to watch and interact with our superstars.” It is frankly embarrassing and needs to change.

If we are to accept that the timing of the All-Star Game needs to move, the question becomes when? They can’t move it up because it would get drowned out by the NBA Finals, and if it were to be pushed back too far it would bleed into football season. That leaves Labor Day as the best possible answer. It comes at a prime TV time during a holiday weekend, and doesn’t intersect with any other major sporting events. Now there couldn’t be an event on Saturday because that is the opening weekend of College Football, but this is where it becomes an All-Weekend event. There’s no need to schedule anything on Saturday if you put the Home Run Derby on Friday as the opening act of Labor Day Weekend. Are you telling me ESPN says no to being able to promote the Home Run Derby and the College Football Week 1 premiere game on back-to-back nights? What’s more, by placing the game on Sunday, baseball is able to put its premiere regular-season event on the best night for sports TV, with the added benefits of kids being able to stay up due to the next day being a holiday. Rather than randomly being placed in the middle of the week, baseball’s All-Star festivities suddenly become a weekend event centered around a holiday, the same way basketball centers its All-Star weekend around President’s Day.

While the All-Star Game being placed on Labor Day Weekend would certainly increase the game’s popularity, this seemingly creates the problem of the players’ not getting any rest for five straight months. However, this actually forces a solution that resolves another problem currently surfacing in baseball. You see, everyone is realizing that in today’s day and age the season is simply too long. 162 games is simply too many for the exertion used by today’s modern athletes, and there has been a greater push for baseball to return to its pre-1961 schedule of 154 games. However, Major League Baseball does not want to shorten the calendar time of the baseball season, but with the All-Star Game being moved they may not have to. All that the MLB would need to do is to add another break in the middle of the year, and a Labor Day All-Star Game gives them the perfect time. You see, the MLB is increasingly losing to the NBA in the ratings game, and during the NBA Finals baseball is essentially ignored. Instead of fruitlessly trying to compete with the NBA, baseball could simply cede that time by taking 8-10 days off (depending on how many off days would be agreed to for a 154 game schedule) to give the players a break. It is not as if two breaks are without precedent considering the All-Star Game was played twice a year from 1959-1952 before the MLB realized that having two games removed the luster of the event. Ultimately, moving the All-Star Game is a no-lose situation which maximizes player health and the visibility of the sport, while cleanly breaking the season into three distinct parts.

Beyond pushing back the timing of the All-Star Game, Baseball needs to change the format of both the Home Run Derby and the game itself. The Home Run Derby is a million-dollar idea on paper, one that should be a major draw. After all, what baseball thing is more exciting than seeing superhuman sluggers hit balls over 500 feet? But while the derby is still extremely entertaining the current timed format takes away from the spectacle of the event. You see, the primary draw of events like the Home Run Derby and the slam dunk contest is not the competition but the spectacle. People care less about who wins than about seeing super-athletic people do super-athletic things. Michael Jordan’s free throw line dunk was a moment that was able to be consumed in its entirety because everyone was fully present for the dunk itself, and was allowed to revel in what they had just witnessed. With the clock, that is simply not possible. Everyone is simply trying to throw pitches as fast as possible so when Juan Soto hits a 520-foot Home Run we are not even able to see it land, because they are already on the next pitch, leading to an extremely choppy TV broadcast. The clock essentially takes away from the main draw of the event and sets us back nearly a century because we are only able to really know what happened when the round is over. Compare the energy in the building for Josh Hamilton’s legendary 2008 Home Run Derby performance with Pete Alonso’s showcase on Monday. While the anticipation and excitement built with each mammoth Hamilton shot, that was not able to happen last night because no one was able to appreciate any one of Alonso’s 35 first-round homers. And it’s not as if the clock shortens the event, considering Monday’s derby still took nearly three hours. Ultimately, the MLB needs to return to the out system in order to make the event about the spectacle of the home runs, rather than simply how many are hit.

The Final change MLB should make to the All-Star Game is to the way the rosters themselves are constructed. For starters, the rule requiring every team to have an All-Star should be nixed. While it is a nice sentiment, the rule was created in 1933 at a time when there were only eight teams in each league, and even the worst teams had at least one guy who fans would want to get to see during a time in which no games were televised. Baseball is now a sport of 15 team-leagues, where fans have the opportunity to watch anybody they want. If someone wanted to be able to see a crappy team’s token All-Star, they can do it on their own time. There is no need to include them in the event at the expense of superior players, downgrading the nature of the game itself. The fact that Max Scherzer only made the game as an injury replacement due to token All-Stars should be enough of a message that this policy, one which has long been ditched by the NFL and NBA, needs to go. Beyond changing the rules for roster construction, the best players should not be the starters. While this seems like an absurd notion, isn’t even more absurd that all of the best players are gone by the fourth inning? Wouldn’t you rather see Vlad Jr. go 468 in the ninth than the third? This removes the possibility of legendary All-Star Game moments such as Ted Williams and Stan Musial’s walk-off home runs because today they would be out of the game. The MLB is essentially asking people to plan their night around a showcase of the best stars in the game in which the best players are gone a third of the way through, leading to two hours of a decreasing product. That would be like Springsteen starting a show with “Thunder Road,” “Born to Run,” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” before doing an entire run-through of the Human Touch Album. Having the worst players start would let the drama build leading to the climax with the best players at the end, following the linear path of literally every single other television product.

Even with all of the proposed changes I’ve proposed, I still loved this year's All-Star Game. I loved watching today’s young stars, I loved watching balls fly out of Coors, and I loved watching the one All-Star Game that is truly made of actual competition between the game’s biggest stars. But I’m not who baseball should be targeting, because I will watch either way, but the MLB needs to realize that that is not the case for everyone. The question becomes whether baseball is willing to make bold changes that will work for the better- or whether they're content to continue sitting on their asses, preaching tradition and nostalgia while helping destroy their premiere in-season event.