TERRY: MLB All-Star game flawed, not broken

Over the last 20 years, Major League Baseball has sapped all the fun from the MLB All-Star game.

Well, maybe not all the fun.

The annual mid-summer classic is on Tuesday, again pitting the American and National leagues in a game featuring the best players in baseball. The teams are great again this year, with a smattering of future-Hall of Famers and up-and-comers mixed with guys who had a great first half of the season.

It’s never been the format that hasn’t been fun. That’s always a blast. All your favorite players in one place. Fantasy teams in real life. By itself, having a game with all that talent on the field should make for the most exciting game before the postseason.

The lead up to the event, including the home run derby, is always anticipated. Even if the event takes nine hours, I do like watching someone violently hit a small object an impossibly far way. As someone that only twice hit the wall in baseball, it’s almost cartoonish.

The game itself has fizzled.

But, it’s still fixable.

The first step would be to shut down all but a weekend of interleague play.

I’m not a hard-line traditionalist bent on restoring the game to the glory days of the 1950s. I like the idea of interleague play. Before, the only time you’d see any of the teams from opposite sides of the designated-hitter debate compete against each other was in the all-star game and the World Series.

I think it’s great that the Cubs and White Sox fans in Chicago or Mets and Yankees fans in New York have a series in which they can settle their differences. It’s not as great for, say, fans of the Detroit Tigers or Atlanta Braves that don’t have a natural rival to claim bragging rights from.

So the charade where the league is featuring interleague games every day has really taken away from the luster of the once-a-year spectacles like the all-star game.

Stop that. Except for a weekend a year. One series, make it good.

And while we’re stopping things that don’t make sense, it’s in everybody’s best interest to stop pretending this game means something.

It’s a fun idea on paper to make home-field advantage in the World Series rest on the game, but it’s ridiculous in practice.

It’s a game featuring players on vacation. They’re playing on a foreign team next to guys they’ve likely never been on the field with at the same time. It’s an exhibition game in every sense of the word, put on only to give the fans a show. It doesn’t count in the standings, it shouldn’t count for anything else.

Which gets to how to make guys who have no stake in the game, other than contract incentives, to play hard in an exhibition contest.

More incentives. A bonus for best defensive play. A bonus for biggest hit, or longest home run. Nastiest pitch.

Get the fans involved. Add an online or social media vote.

Players are always interested in more money and friendly competition. Fans are always interested in more interaction.

The all-star game can be fixed. The MLB just has to work a little harder to make the game mean something more.