Bob Collins
The possibility that Major League Baseball owners would lockout players, raising the possibility that baseball would not return in the spring, ended overnight with word that the owners and players have reached a new collective bargaining agreement.
In the process, the Associated Press reports, baseball has returned the All Star game to its meaningless status, repealing former commissioner Bud Selig’s idea of giving home field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star Game.
He came up with the plan after the 2002 game ended in a tie. Treating the game as the scrimmage that it was, the managers ran out of players.
But some people said it wasn’t fair that the Cubs, who won more games last season than any other team in baseball, didn’t get home field advantage against the Cleveland Indians. In the end, it didn’t matter; the Cubs won game seven, we hear, in Cleveland.
How will baseball make the All Star Game have “sizzle” without meaning? The solution isn’t surprising: Money. Players will play for a pool of money.
That’s so baseball.
