The grand experiment to give baseball’s all-star game a meaningful payoff is over.
According to the Associated Press, the all-star game no longer will be used to determine home-field advantage for the World Series as part of the new collective bargaining agreement that was hammered out Wednesday night. Instead, World Series home field will go to the pennant winner with the better regular season record.
The all-star game has determined World Series home-field advantage ever since the 2002 midsummer classic ended in a 7-7 tie after both teams ran out of pitchers. Commissioner Bud Selig, who was booed in his hometown of Milwaukee after the decision to call the game was announced, said the new stakes would ensure that the all-star game is not “a meaningless exhibition game.” Baseball even ran a campaign, “This time it counts.”
Before Selig’s switch, home-field advantage alternated between the AL and NL. Under the new CBA, the players in the all-star game will compete instead for a pool of money, the AP reports.
Since the change, the AL has won 11 of 14 all-star games, including the last four. The National League has the World Series edge since then, though, winning eight of the last 14. In the last two World Series to go seven games, the NL has won on the road, with the San Francisco Giants winning in Kansas City two years ago and the Chicago Cubs winning in Cleveland in October.
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