Mike Celizic

I don't care anymore if the kids get to see the game. I care if I get to see it.

When are the networks going to realize that you can't build an audience on the other side of midnight? When are they going to stop starting the games so late in the night that there's no chance that any person with a day job can stay up to watch it?

I sure hope it's soon, because an awful lot of people missed an awfully good baseball game Tuesday night. Part of that is because the game went 15 innings and 10 minutes shy of five hours. But a bigger part is because the game itself didn't start until nearly 9 p.m. ET.

And what a shame. This wasnt a good All-Star game, it was a great one, maybe one of the greatest we've ever seen. It didn't have towering home runs by legendary players or multiple consecutive strikeouts by all-time great pitchers. It just had great baseball, complete with bobbles and errors and bad throws to go with great catches and throws and tags.

But by the time it was over, it was past 1:30 on the East Coast and closing in on bedtime in California. Baseball did almost everything right. It had a great All-Star Week, a great home run derby, a great pregame celebration that brought together more Hall-of-Famers than have ever gathered anywhere outside of Cooperstown, and it put on a great, great game.

There was but one fly in the games ointment, and it was the size of a 747. Forget watching the extra innings. I can't believe that even half the original audience made it to the end of regulation. Theres no way you could stay with an exhibition game, even one played for home-field advantage in the World Series until midnight and then 98 minutes beyond.

This is no longer just one of those things that carping columnists clamor about. An 8 p.m. start time for the show is pushing it as it is, but when you precede the actual game with 45 minutes of pomp and circumstance, you're telling people that we're having this great game, but we don't want you to watch it.

For weeks leading up to Tuesday night, baseball hammered us with talk of the All-Star Game. We had the updates on the voting, the announcement of the fan choices, then the players choices, then the extra man vote. MLB.com and every game broadcast counted down the days and then the hours to the game.

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And then when we actually got to the appointed hour, the game suddenly didn't matter. Instead we had the introduction of the legends again, a great thrill for anyone who was there or watched it, and then we had the introduction of the players and then venerable old George Steinbrenner puttering in on a golf cart with the ceremonial first-pitch balls. It was all great theater, but it wasn't baseball and it was pushing the clock deeper and deeper into the night without a pitch being thrown.

By the time the first pitch was delivered by Cliff Lee, some of the people in the park had already been in the stadium environs for five hours. If they stayed to the end, those true fans who arrived before 4 had put in nearly a 10-hour day to watch a baseball game.

Baseball can't control extra innings. One of the beauties of the game is that there is no clock on it. But it knows that games routinely last three hours and that it would be only by the greatest of luck that this one would end before midnight. Yet baseball agreed to the 8:48 start dictated by Fox.

I'm not singling out Fox on this, either. Every network plays the same game. World Series games that say 8 p.m. on the schedule don't start until 20 or 30 minutes after that hour. It's the same with NBA Finals games. The start of the broadcast has little relation to the start of the game because the network and the league has to put on its special show first.

It's obvious that the show should start at 7 and the games by 7:30. I don't care how great a show you have planned, if you can't fit it into a half hour, it's too long. Cut something out. Or start it early for the fans in the stadium and let the broadcast flash back to it.

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The networks say they have to start at 8 because that's when primetime starts. The 7-8 hour is reserved for the tabloid shows and Simpsons and Seinfeld reruns that are so popular. They're also controlled by the affiliates, and its a money-making hour for them. They don't want to give it up.

But they're going to have to. Think about it. The reason Fox started the broadcast at 8 was so it wouldn't cut into The Simpsons and Seinfeld at least in New York; I'm not sure what you see in other parts of the country. The network can't tell the affiliates, "Hey, this is how it's gonna be. We need that hour for the big game and we'll have to figure out how to make it right with you."

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Everybody knows that the ever-expanding cable networks are cutting into network ratings. It makes no sense, when you have an event that a substantial segment of the nation might want to tune into, to schedule it to begin at an hour that all but guarantees that audience will be gone before it's done. It's the All-Star Game, not the All-Star pregame show and pageant and nattering commentators. Put it on at a time when grown-ups can watch it. We'll worry about the kids later.

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