The All-Star Game has been dead for years – it’s time to lay it to rest for good

If you ask any baseball fan to name the play that defined the 2011 MLB season, you will get one of two answers: David Freese’s Game 6 walk off home run to send Busch Stadium into a frenzy and force a World Series Game 7, or his two-strike, two-out double in the bottom of the ninth that tied the game just when it seemed the Texas Rangers had the Series title locked up (honorable mention to Lance Berkman delivering his own 2-strike game-tying hit in the 10th inning of the same game – a play that too many people have forgotten). 

The answer you will not hear when asking baseball fans this question, however, is Prince Fielder’s three run home run in the fourth inning of an exhibition All Star game in July. While this seemingly meaningless play in a seemingly meaningless game certainly is no comparison to any of the heroics in the Fall Classic, the Cardinals were able to celebrate their eventual World Series victory in front of a home crowd thanks to Fielder’s eventual game-winning bomb. 

From 2003 until 2016, the MLB All Star Game decided the recipient of home field advantage for the World Series, and with the National League’s 5-1 victory, the Cardinals received this advantage in 2011 despite having a worse overall record than the Rangers during the regular season.

Home field advantage was no small factor in the 2011 Series, as the home team won 5 of the 7 games, including Games Six and Seven at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. People understandably criticized the MLB for introducing this rule in 2003 and for maintaining its use for 13 seasons. However, it truly marked the last time any All-Star game in any professional US sport held any meaning, making it the final All-Star Game that fans found exciting to watch.

This weekend was All Star Weekend for the NBA, and pretty much every event, perhaps none more so than the ‘big game’ itself, faced significant criticism from fans and media members alike. For the second consecutive year, Mac McClung, a G-League player who has only gotten minutes in 4 NBA games in his career, won the NBA Dunk Contest. McClung beat out Celtics’ star Jaylen Brown, who somehow made it into the final round after dunking over a 5-foot-3 youtuber who was sitting down. It took Brown two attempts to accomplish this feat.

The headlining event for the weekend was the actual All Star Game itself, which was a glorified shootaround that the East ‘won’ by a score of 211-186. The game was an absolute joke, and if I hadn’t been at a bar where it was being broadcast on twenty different TV’s, I would’ve turned it off in seconds. The two teams combined for 168 3-pointers attempted, and only made 39% of them_.

NBA players, arguably the softest professional athletes in sports, have already complained about the league’s new 65-game rule, so it’s definitely not surprising that these guys don’t care about a game with nothing on the line. For this reason, and for the sake of fans who have to endure watching such brutal basketball, I argue that it’s time to retire the All-Star game for good. 

It’s not just basketball though, as the NHL recently held its own All Star Game and Skills Competition, and the NFL’s annual Pro Bowl took place in early February. Both were essentially unwatchable. 

The NFL Pro Bowl game has now evolved into a flag football matchup, and this year’s competition ended with a 64-59 final score — clearly, defense is not a priority in any of these games (quite a long fall from the peak of the Pro Bowl: when Sean Taylor took Punter Brian Moorman’s soul with a hit that was probably referenced more than a few times as the league decided to switch to non-contact for the game).

On the ice, superstars like current NHL points leader Nikita Kucherov glided around the rink during the passing competition, earning boos from the fans in Toronto and criticism from the announcers, while uninterested goalies were left out to dry by a complete lack of effort from anyone that wasn’t currently possessing the puck.

Kucherov was not alone in his lack of effort, and it seems every year that the overall sentiment is that players would rather spend the time with family or friends relaxing oceanside than traveling to places like Toronto to put on a show for fans during their rare off time in the middle of a grueling season. 

For those who think that the players still appreciate the novelty of lacing up the skates with their fellow superstars for a weekend of low-stress pickup hockey, look no further than Hurricanes’ Forward Seth Jarvis, who practically begged fans not to vote for him because he’d already purchased non-refundable tickets to Mexico. 

Can you blame him?

I’m not arguing that we need to go back to the MLB All-Star glory days and make these events have serious meaning for the rest of the season, as that was a pretty stupid rule (even if it gave my hometown Cardinals home field advantage in 2011). Nor am I arguing that we need people like Sean Taylor running around massacring punters, but if commissioners can’t figure out a way for players to care about these games, and the end-product is as bad as it has been, then what’s the point of having them at all?