Let’s look at his contract desire. He wants $25 million or more, and rumor has it that he wanted a 10-year deal, but it appears now that a six-year contract is all he is likely to get – due to his size and his mediocrity at 1st base.

Production wise Prince Fielder is worth $25 million per, but at 300-plus pounds, logic says his days at 1st base are numbered. And Fielder’s not a top 10 draw in baseball no matter how many homers he hits so, 10 years is out of the question unless you’re buying what Boras is selling, and if you are… may I suggest some Cottonelle or Charmin?

The usual suspects like the Yankees and Red Sox could afford him, but just don’t need him. That leaves Texas and the dregs. The Cubs, Seattle, Toronto, the Orioles, Miami and the Nationals all could use him. However the Rangers just signed Japanese sensation Yu Darvish for 6 years and $60 million and they have Mitch Moreland who was once considered one of the top 1st base prospects in all of baseball. Also, power isn’t something the Rangers need and Moreland projects as a better defensive first baseman. And why sacrifice at bats from one of the most underrated hitters in the game in Michael Young? Fielder would cost more than just money for the Rangers. I say it’s a bad move for the Rangers.

Toronto might make sense. The Blue Jays love power, and while they have Adam Lind who hit 26 homers last season at first…

Prince would bring in fans with his 38 homers, but the big thing is his on-base percentage, which was .415 to Lind’s .295. And Fielder is a bonafide RBI machine. The Blue Jays however don’t really need more offense. They need better starting pitching, and they need a real leadoff hitter. When you add that Fielder will be $25 million for six to 10 years, I again say bad move.

Baltimore needs Prince Fielder for his offense and for his crowd appeal. But Baltimore is so far away from being a contender that they would have to offer him more than $25 million or more than six seasons to attract him, and would he want to sign just for the money?  VERY BAD MOVE!

Miami has spent like they were the Yankees this offseason. But with a new stadium, a solid pitching staff and wasting money on Jose Reyes, the Marlins don’t have the money for Fielder. Gaby Sanchez is a mediocre player at best and Fielder would have made a lot of sense in Miami for publicity. It would have been a perfect place to live with great weather and he would have paid no state income tax on $150 million to $250 million dollars! To me it looks like Boras sold Fielder on 10 years, and Pujols kind of clout, and has left him holding a bag of magic beans. Can a 300 pound Fielder climb the beanstalk Jack?

The Cubs were my team of choice going into the offseason. I believe he would have fit with them because he’s all offense and little defense, plus the questionable attitude (talking about leaving Milwaukee well before the season was close to over) makes him a Soriano, Sosa, and Zambrano kind of ME FIRST ball player. They acquired Anthony Rizzo and also have Bryan LaHair, who has been a minor league monster, so no adding Fielder seems out of the question.

Furthermore Chicago seems to be too discombobulated even with Theo Epstein there to pull off this move.  I say it’s a solid move for the Cubs, but they won’t do it.

This leaves us with the two big time teams bidding for his services. One of those two teams doesn’t need him, except for the draw, and the other needs him so desperately that if another team offers Prince five years they almost have to offer him six or seven. The Nationals, who have drawn huge buzz as the speculated team for Mr. Fielder, makes sense to me only from a fandom sense.

The Nationals have Stephen Strasburg who will bring in fans. They have a very under-appreciated offense with Ryan Zimmerman at 3rd base, Bryce Harper coming up soon, an excellent young catcher in Wilson Ramos (yes the kidnapping victim), Mike Morse who had a breakout season with 31 homers, and, coming off of injury, Adam LaRoche, who is also capable of hitting 20 plus homers with gold glove caliber defense.

Morse is 6’5 270 pounds and can play right field with LaRoche back.  For under a million dollars last season Morse was in the top 10 in six major offensive categories in the National League last year.

If I’m the Nationals I hold off on signing Fielder unless he comes down in price and years. How can Boras backtrack now and tell a guy who hit .299 with 38 homers in the prime of his career to lower his demands for both price or contract length?  So my vote on the Nationals is: don’t do it, even though if you do the gates will be turning even on days when Strasburg isn’t pitching.

The best fit for him in the American League is in Seattle. Justin Smoak has been a joke. His offensive numbers are meager and his defense is mediocre. His drawing power is great if your last name is Smoak. Fielder becomes the face of the Mariners immediately. He becomes the focal point of their lineup. Ichiro is now 38 years old and coming off of his worst season as a professional. And King Felix is not getting any younger. I see Seattle as the best spot for him now. The Mariners just added Jesus Montero from the Yankees who is going to be an offensive force, and if you put him in the three hole in front of Prince and behind Ichiro and Mike Carp, add a healthy Franklin Gutierrez for 2012 and you get a major league lineup that can at least score enough runs to let Hernandez win more than half of his games.

I want to add Milwaukee into this very quickly. Yes, they need him. While the money is disquieting for a small-market team, with the reigning MVP set to miss 50 games for banned substances. Without Fielder, the Brewers will be resigned to smaller crowds and no hope for the playoffs.

It’s a long-shot, but at this point Fielder almost has to consider it an option. He would be lying to himself if he thought he would be going to the playoffs anytime soon in Seattle. Texas could strike oil and afford him or the Yankees could come out of nowhere – it wouldn’t be the first time that has happened. But I wouldn’t bet money on it.

National Sports Advisors hasn’t released their odds for the World Series yet (due Feb. 5th), but the Rangers were 5th, Milwaukee was 15th and the Cubs were 18th last year. The rest of the teams mentioned filled out the bottom 3rd of the league nicely.

Prince would have to take a discount to stay at Milwaukee, or possibly to go to the Rangers who don’t actually need him. His other option is to be a hired gun for the most money to the rest of the worst – and of those options, only the Nationals and Blue Jays have even a remote shot at .500. Prince will have to have huge All-Star and MVP placement incentives in his contract because MVPs rarely come from the bottom of the league, which is where he’s most likely going to end up. If I were Prince, I’d re-sign with the Brewers, get paid a ton of money, and be a hero. But could his ego – and perhaps more importantly, could Boras’ ego – take it?

Wow. Another New York fan with a forum.

We’re gonna win the World Series.

Why?

Because CC is skinnier.

Because Derek Jeter has a new contract the the team didn’t want to give him.

Because we have great prospects.

BECAUSE WE ALWAYS WIN THE WORLD SERIES!

Even when we don’t.

It’s like this: I don’t hate the Green Bay Packers Organization, nor do I hate the Universities of Wisconsin and Iowa. And I don’t hate the New York Yankees Professional Baseball Club.

I hate their obnoxious, self-entitled, condescending, holier-than-thou, make-me-want-to-urinate-on-their-dog fans. These idiots think they follow the Greatest Team In The History Of Competition and because of that, they are the Chosen People. God’s favorites.

I hope they get smited.

This is a message to all you front-running New York Yankee fans: YOU’RE TEAM ISN’T VERY GOOD!

Your starting rotation is at best two men deep, and for cryin’ out loud, your fourth and fifth starters might be Freddy Garcia and Bartolo Colon.

BARTOLO COLON?

Seriously?

What, was Sid Fernandez not available?

Your bullpen is led by a guy who may well be the best closer ever , but the guy is so old he actually pitched for the New Amsterdam Yankees (Shut up. I know they were the New York Highlanders. It’s called artistic license you morons).

Then what? Joba Chamberlain is a head case who gets mentioned in every trade rumor the Yankees are connected to, which means every trade rumor ever. They want to dump him for a reason.

You guys signed what’s his name from the Rays. Congratulations. Even your GM thought that was a dumb move.

Some say you have the greatest hitting infield of all time. Ok, but Derek Jeter  is not 27 anymore ( ). A-Rod and Teixeira are good for at least one trip, and probably two, to the DL. Each. Robinson Cano can’t turn the double play. Your outfield is MLB average. Granderson, Gardner and Swisher are ok, but they aren’t going to remind anybody of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.

Hell they won’t even remind people of Bernie Williams and Paul O’Neill. Your DH is old. Your bench is suspect.

Yes, you’ll try to make a trade or two in-season, but there’s nothing in your farm system that’s going to pry Francisco Liriano from the Twins or Felix Hernandez from the Mariners.

You play in a division that’s at least as strong as it usually is. To be sure, the Rays have taken a step back, but the Orioles and the Blue Jays both had very good off-seasons and are going to be pretty competitive. And, in my opinion, the Boston Red Sox are the favorites in the AL this year.

But none of this matters to you blathering, myopic, pinstriped lemmings. You, the deacons of the First Church of Steinbrenner, insist on filling the airwaves, the blogosphere, and ESPN with your ridiculous crap.

You sound like a bunch of idiots.

Which you are.

You’re in for a strong dose of reality this year.

Did I mention A.J. Burnett?

This is going to be fun to watch.

We’re going to try to start doing the same thing here at Brushbackpitch.com as well, starting today.

Jeff Idelson, Baseball Hall of Fame president, announced on the MLB Network that, in his 14^th year of eligibility, pitcher Bert Blyleven received the necessary 75 percent of votes to make the Hall.  Blyleven’s self-promotion sometimes went over the top but his 287 wins, despite playing for some lousy teams, and two World Series championships certainly helped his argument. Nor did his career totals of 3,701 strikeouts and 242 complete games hurt.

Joining him will be Roberto Alomar, who played second base for seven teams during a 17 year career. He stole 474 bases, earned 10 straight gold gloves and made 12 straight All-Star games. He received 90 percent of the vote and, Idelson said, the third highest vote total ever.

They join Pat Gillick, who was tapped by the Expansion Era Committee.

That leaves a number of the 33 candidates on this year’s ballot still on the outside looking in, including Barry Larkin, Jack Morris, Lee Smith, Jeff Bagwell and several members of the controversial “steroid era,” which we’ve written about several times in other contexts and certainly will cover under this heading as well.

So what do you think? Are this year’s selections the right ones? Who should have gone in and who should have stayed out?

We’re looking forward to hearing from you at brushbackpitch.com.

I also think the Rangers are going to be serious players for years to come. They are now well financed and a television deal with Fox Sports Southwest makes them a real, big-money player near the likes of the Yankees and the Red Sox.

But I’m stymied by the latest news from Arlington, Texas. Various reports have the Texas Rangers close to dedicating big money – about $96 million for six years, according to at least one report – toward signing third baseman Adrian Beltre.

Now, Beltre’s not a bad player, not by any stretch. By most accounts his defense at third base has always been very good, though there are also suggestions that he’s slipping a bit, and even if he isn’t yet, he’d be 37 at the end of a six-year deal.

The bigger question I have is his offense. This is a guy who has had two monster seasons out of 13 in the big leagues with the bat. He hit .334 with 48 homers, 121 RBI and a 1.017 OPS in 2004 at the age of 25. And he hit .321 with 28 homers, 102 RBI and a .919 OPS in 2010 with the Red Sox.

Take out those two seasons and he has 202 dingers in 11 seasons. Take out those two seasons and he’s had one 99 RBI season and never anything else above 89. Take out those two seasons and Beltre is a .264 hitter who has never produced another OPS above .835 and who has produced a lot more seasons in the low to mid .700s in that category.

What’s the most obvious common thread between the two monster seasons produced by Beltre? They were two contract years. After his 2004 season with Los Angeles Dodgers, he was signed to a big money contract by Seattle and promptly put up decent-but-largely-ordinary seasons. He signed a one-year deal with Boston last year after an injury-filled 2009 with Seattle and put up his second huge season with Boston.

And here we sit.

The Rangers have gotten buy in from team player Michael Young, who reportedly has agreed to become a designated hitter/utility infielder to make room for Beltre at third base. So it would appear as though there is a strong likelihood a deal is in some level of negotiation.

And I think this might be a mistake. I understand the Rangers want to capitalize on the momentum they garnered during the fantastic postseason run. And losing out to Philadelphia on Cliff Lee had to be a difficult pill to swallow.

Beltre is considered one of, if not the, last impact non-pitcher on the market. But giving six years and a nearly nine-figure contract to a good-but-not-great player who saved his best career moments for the seasons in which his long-term deals are about to end doesn’t seem like a prudent way to improve what is and will be a very competitive team, with or without Beltre.

There will be opportunities both in-season and next off-season to add pieces to the puzzle if they are deemed necessary. Signing Beltre long-term is more likely to prove the axiom that sometimes the best deals are the ones you don’t make.

Thus Major League Baseball will take one more step toward becoming another league that waters down its regular season in favor of a playoff format that invites too many teams to take a shot at the championship.

I initially didn’t like the expansion to four playoff teams with a wild card included but it was a necessity when each league was split into three divisions. And I grudgingly will admit that it has created some fantastic races, this year included when San Francisco, San Diego and Atlanta fought tooth and nail to the season’s final weekend over the last two playoff spots.

But this year’s race is but one reason why expansion is a bad idea. Add another series – supposedly expected to be a wild card play-in series to determine which team really gets to advance to each league’s final four – and the final weekend wouldn’t have mattered. All three teams would already have been in the playoffs.

Furthermore, in the American League, it would have added an 89-73 Boston team ravaged by injuries all season. They would have taken on a 95 win Yankees team for the right to play in the real playoffs.

Why should a team clearly inferior to New York during the season, even one that managed to somehow split 18 games with the Bronx Bombers, have yet another opportunity to then keep that rival from being among the American League’s final four?

Why, money, of course.

So even though it’ll often result in average teams making the playoffs, even though it could stretch the season in to mid-November, even though it will dilute the regular season and even though the season is long enough already, Bud Selig likes the idea for “fairness” reasons, according to the Sporting News. So the playoffs are likely to expand.

Fairness my butt. Win your division and don’t leave it to chance. If you don’t, you have no right to complain about not making the playoffs.

This playoff expansion is nothing more than another money grab for a league that is full of them during an era in which money grabs are the norm and not the exception.

Fans, be damned. Players, be damned, as the NFL embarks on its latest grab, the attempt to cram an 18 game regular season schedule down its players’ throats during the collective bargaining negotiations.

I’m sure the networks would love it. Tired of watching the Yankees play the Red Sox on ESPN 46 times per season? Get used to it if this playoff expansion takes place. Go back the last nine years. Five of those seasons, the Yankees and the Red Sox both bought, err, played their way into the playoffs, with one winning the American League East and the other claiming the Wild Card.

During four seasons, one or the other made it. In three of those four, had the five-team playoff scenario been in place, whichever of the two hadn’t already made the playoffs would have been the additional wild card team.

Go figure.

And sure, you can argue that adding another wild card team gives a different team a chance in those years when Boston and New York both already make the playoffs. It’s true, but it’s more like an argument a Boston or New York fan would make in defending a big-market-based economic structure that is still more broken than fixed than an argument for expanding the playoffs.

Woo hoo! Let’s further reward mediocrity. We’re number five! We get to go the playoffs too.

I haven’t seen a lot of study of fan reaction to the proposed playoff expansion. But just searching the net for blog reaction or informal poll results leads me to believe the fans, by and large, are not in favor of the plan.

This is just further proof that the opinions of those who buy the tickets and the merchandise and who foot the bill in many ways for the salaries players make and the profits teams generate for their owners have little say in what actually happens in sports that are ostensibly supposed to be about them.

Once again, it’s all about the money.

I thought the series was over after Tampa manager Joe Maddon was ejected following Michael Young’s three-run homer, a shot that should never have happened because Young’s check swing on the previous pitch should have been strike three.

But the Rays collected themselves and continued battling, eventually earning the right to come back home for gave five after winning both games in Texas.

Watching the seesaw battle between these two clubs was a pretty dramatic contrast to the other AL series, which was won in dominating fashion by the New York Yankees over the Minnesota Twins, who despite a narrowed talent gap in 2010 could not come close to getting past their playoff nemesis of recent times.

I thought heading into this year’s series that things might be different. Early on it looked like there was a chance I could be right. The Twins led 3-0 in game one heading into the sixth inning.

But then things fell apart.

As has happened so many times in the last 20 years, the Yankees rose up when it mattered and seized control of the game, stealing a win and then carrying their momentum over to the final two games as well.

As I look back over this series, I think these teams are more closely matched in terms of physical talent than they have been in quite awhile.

But there still are a couple holes I think the Twins need to fill before they can beat the Yankees – and that’s important because as the old saying goes, the Yankees are the best and to be the best, you’ve got to beat the best.

The Twins have narrowed the talent gap between themselves and the Yankees. No longer do the Twins go into a playoff series with a Matt Tolbert, who is a solid utility player but not a starting corner infielder, playing third base and batting ninth in the order.

No longer is Nick Punto, another solid role player, also in the starting lineup alongside Tolbert, providing teams with at least two spots in the order where pitchers can say with relative confidence “I can challenge this guy, he’s unlikely to damage me greatly.”

In fact, while I still think New York has a talent advantage, I also think if the Twins had gotten the monkey of a long postseason losing streak off their collective backs by winning that first game, they might have had a chance to take the series by the throat considering the relative mediocrity of the Yankees’ starting rotation the last half of the regular season.

I think the biggest hurdles the Twins have to overcome now are the mental ones. Minnesota still lacks that Jack Morris-type starting pitcher who will come into the game, throw a pitch underneath a star player’s chin, and then grin at him as if to say “Yeah, motherf%$^&%, it’s on.” Morris pitched one of the all-time greatest World Series games in 1991, not just beating the Braves in game seven but absolutely willing the team to victory.

Francisco Liriano has that kind of stuff but he hasn’t been around the block enough yet. He was solid for five innings in game one this week but the Yankees got to him thereafter. He might develop into a Morris type player. But he isn’t yet.

Look no further than that Rays-Rangers game tonight to see how important such a pitcher can be. Cliff Lee was closing in on 100 pitches nearing the seventh inning. That seems to be a magic number for today’s Twins rotation. But Lee got stronger as the night went on and he managed to gut out a complete game to take the Rangers to the AL Championship Series.

Likewise, the Twins lack that Dan Gladden-like leader who would provide that Morris-like fire in the everyday lineup. Gladden was far from a great player. But he was a solid player who, if he had to, would chase down a deep fly ball, chop off his leg and use it as a club to knock the ball back into play, disinfect the wound and kill the pain with a shot of Jack Daniel’s and then use the empty bottle as a crutch to help him back to the dugout where he would have the injury sewn up.

The current Minnesota lineup is made up of some very good players. Joe Mauer is one of the best catchers in the game, and he might go down as possibly one of the best in the history of baseball.

Justin Morneau, when healthy, is a fantastic weapon. Jim Thome is a classy veteran who still packs punch. Michael Cuddyer, Jason Kubel, Denard Span – right on down the line this is as good a group of players as has been seen in Minnesota and as decent a group as you will find on and off the field. They represent Minnesota well.

But they are not fiery. And that’s fine. They don’t need to be. They should not be forced to lead in ways that don’t mesh with their personalities.

That said, the Yankees are a smug group. They’re the best lineup money can buy and they’ve been there before.

From top to bottom they are professionals. They aren’t going to be intimidated and they know that when push comes to shove, more often than not they are going to be the better team in the end.

In fact, they almost seem bored and disinterested as games unfold. They know they can turn it on when they need to and, in most cases, they do (see game one). That attitude showed through this entire series. The Yankees waited and waited and waited and when the opportunity arose, they pounced.

The Twins have been the Yankees’ punching bags for much of the last decade when it comes to the American League playoffs. I think the talent gap is as small as it has ever been.

But until the Twins show they are willing to punch them in the mouth – until the Twins grab the Yankees by the figurative throat and show they won’t be intimidated by the $200 million juggernaut from the east coast – I don’t think they’re going to get past New York and take it to the next level.

Major league journeyman Matt Walbeck spent two years at the helm for the Altoona Curve, the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 2009 the team finished in sixth place in the Eastern League. In 2010, the team captured the first Eastern League championship in its 12 year history.

On Sept. 29, Pittsburgh told Walbeck his services were no longer needed.

I’m not going to pretend I followed the Curve during their championship run, nor am I going to say I recognize even one of the names of the players on the team’s roster during the 2010 season. I can’t say I know anything about Walbeck as a manager or much about his background – other than I watched him play catcher for the Minnesota Twins back during the team’s dark years in the early 2000s.

But when a guy wins a championship, even in the minor leagues, it would seem he is doing something right.

The Pirates, who last had anything resembling a competitive team in the major leagues in 1992, only released a one sentence statement: “We appreciate Matt’s efforts and wish him the best in his future endeavors but felt that it was best that we allow him to pursue other opportunities,” according to general manager Neal Huntington via the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Dejan Kovacevic, the Post-Gazette’s Pirates beat writer, updated the story later with a comment from an unidentified source indicating that the move came from concerns about Walbeck’s communication with staff and players.

Okay, maybe he was a bad communicator. He won a championship at the Double-A level for an organization that, for two decades in the major leagues, has had virtually nothing to be excited about at all.And he was 312-224 in four seasons managing in the Detroit Tigers’ system.

Granted, there is more to managing in the minors than winning. But the Pirates finally have some young guys – Andrew McCutchen, Pedro Alvarez, Jose Tabata and Neil Walker among others, that interestingly have come from the  minors over the last couple seasons. Not all played under Walbeck. Some did. And for an organization that has shown little promise for two decades, I would think continuity would be a good thing for a team that must have done something right in 2010 to win the league championship.

Walbeck certainly didn’t do it himself, but someone had to help those players reach that level.

Maybe the Pirates will prove this was the correct move. Maybe the players won the championship in spite of Walbeck rather than because of him. If so I’ll fall on my sword later.

Until then, it would appear to me that the once-proud Pirates franchise has given the city of Pittsburgh and baseball fans around the country another illustration of how the organization has spent two decades as a laughingstock.

But Atlanta outfielder Matt Diaz became my new favorite Major League Baseball player, at least for a day, when I saw footage of him taking out an idiot fan wearing a semi-Spiderman looking outfit while running around Citizens Bank Park.

The leg sweep didn’t keep Spiderman down but it slowed him up enough for security personnel to get him a couple seconds later. Incidentally, the Phillies might want to consider hiring a couple security people who don’t fall on their faces during the pursuit.

But as Kemp said in the yahoo story, the fan was lucky the outfielder chipped in, otherwise the 17-year-old moron might have been tased.

I’m surprised more players don’t get involved in these deals. Most of the time they’re just drunk and stupid, but look no further than the Royals/White Sox game from several years ago when two idiots attacked Royals coach Tom Gamboa after jumping onto the field from the stands to see that these morons could be dangerous.

Personally I think tasers are too good for these idiots. Fans don’t belong on the field during games and when they venture down there they deserve whatever happens to them. And yes, this season at least, Phillies fans have participated in several incidents that have reflected poorly upon them.

Kudos, again, to Matt Kemp.

When I first saw news of the injury I cringed. And the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Matt Gelb confirmed Thursday that there is at least some chance that if the injury is, in fact, serious enough to require the reconstructive surgery that Moyer may instead decide to hang it up.

So why the fanfare? Moyer has pitched for nearly two-and-a-half decades for … seven teams, if I counted right. And the last half-dozen or so he has hardly been great. But he is a gamer. He got out of the gates slowly this year, creating speculation that his spot in the rotation and perhaps on the Phillies’ roster this season might have been in jeopardy. He turned things around, though, and in May became the oldest pitcher ever to throw a shutout.

After that game I took a gander at Moyer’s career statistics and was dumbfounded to realize not only that he had been around forever but that for at least a half-dozen or so years in the late 1990s and early 2000s he was a pretty damn good pitcher.

Would you have pegged Moyer as having 267 career wins? Even over 24 years I didn’t realize he was that close to approaching the 300 plateau that sort of artificially puts starting pitchers in an elite class.

I’m not saying the guy is a Hall of Famer or anything. His 4.24 ERA and 511 homeruns allowed, his appearance in just one All-Star game and his lack of a Cy Young Award win illustrate that he was far from a dominant pitcher at any point in his career. He’s never been considered the best in the game and it’s going to be hard to make a strong case for his enshrinement, especially when there are guys like Bert Blyleven and Jim Kaat who are still on the outside looking in at Cooperstown.

But if this is the end for Moyer, he does deserve the respect due to someone who may not have been the most talented player out there but who, through guts and guile, found a way to get it done for a long damn time. He also comes off as one of those quiet guys who represents himself with class and dignity.

If he does decide to attempt a comeback I wish him luck. If not, I wish him a healthy retirement and the satisfaction of a job well done.

There was a lot of hype leading up to the game this year, with debate over whether Omar Infante belonged in the game and whether rookie phenom Stephen Strasburg got screwed when he was left out.

But at the end of the day, despite all the hoopla, the game’s broadcast produced the lowest television ratings in history. Back in the mid-1960s and 1970s, the game used to produce ratings scores in the mid 20s and share ratings in the mid-50s.

(A ratings point represents one percent of the total households in the United States watching a given show. Share measures the percentage of television sets in use tuned into a program. So 20-plus percent of households with televisions used to watch the All Star Game and more than half of the televisions in use during the game were watching it.)

In 2002, the All Star game slipped to single-digit ratings for the first time and those figures have not returned to double digits in the years since. Tuesday’s game, according to the Los Angeles Times, drew just a 7.5 rating for a paltry 12 million average viewers.

I think there are a few reasons for this. First, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I think it is ridiculous for this exhibition game to determine home field in the World Series. When fans vote for the rosters it should be an exhibition, not a game that determines who hosts a potential Game Seven.

I know my feelings on that are not unanimous, but it still remains ridiculous to me that a game potentially decided by an at-bat between a Pirates’ closer and a Royals’ batter in the late innings could decide who hosts a deciding World Series game between the Yankees and the Phillies, hypothetically. And I think the majority agree.

Second, if you are going to institute that ridiculous rule, which was passed in a panic after negative publicity surrounding an All Star Game tie several years back, then at least remove the equally ridiculous requirement that every team get a representative in the game. This isn’t grade school and it isn’t socialism. If you must turn the game into a gimmicky way of determining homefield, at least make sure the truly best players are at the game.

Finally, after making sure the best players are there, keep them in the game. Take 1965, for example. Hank Aaron batted five times. Several others batted four times. Juan Marichal started for the National League and pitched three innings. The game didn’t have anything like World Series on the line. But the guys played for pride back then. Despite being an exhibition, it was more than an exhibition.

I didn’t watch last night’s game but I read the accounts this morning. Alex Rodriguez and Infante were the only position players who didn’t play. David Ortiz had to run for himself and, sure enough, he was forced on a base hit to the outfield.

And so it goes. Washington’s closer, Matt Capps, got the win. Los Angeles closer Jon Broxton got the save. Yankees starter Phil Hughes took the loss. The National League’s dominant pitching led to its first win in the All Star Game since 1996, when I was a junior in college. By most accounts the 3-1 game was actually a pretty decent contest.

Yet the fewest number of people ever cared enough to turn on the television to watch it. Take a hint, Mr. Selig. Gimmicks are not the answer.