Mike Celizic

It was never much of a contest — at least not until Kenny Rogers got a chance to groove a gopher ball — and it wasn’t particularly exciting. But one thing this year’s All-Star Game proved beyond a doubt is the absurdity of using an exhibition to decide something as vital as home-field advantage in the World Series.

You have to feel for Tony La Russa — and I’m going to admit right now that feeling sorry for La Russa isn’t an emotion with which I am terribly familiar. The man has the best team in the National League, a team that has to be the favorite at the season’s midpoint to return to the World Series. And before his eyes and under his own hand, he watched home field in the Series go to the American League, which has now won eight straight All-Star Games, for the third straight year.

It wasn’t his fault. He put the best players in the National League out there and they got beat. Again. And because they did, if he gets to the World Series, he’s the away team.

The very thought is preposterous. It’s like telling a school kid that his or her chances of getting a scholarship to college are going to depend on the average SAT score of the senior class — in another school.

It’s three years since Selig made the All-Star Game count for something, and that’s long enough. Tuesday night in Detroit was proof positive that the idea is dumber than fur on a mackerel.

Alternating home field worked fine for most of baseball history. And if you had wanted to determine it any other way, the only fair way would have been to give it to the team with the best regular-season record. That way, a team that’s locked up a division in the third week of August has a reason to keep playing hard.

The Cardinals this year are the kind of team that could wrap things up early. Once they do, there’s little incentive to grind it out down the stretch, because they can’t get anything for their efforts. The luck of a one-night exhibition took care of that.

AL extends NL's misery with rally in 9th

Selig thinks putting a prize on the All-Star Game makes it more compelling. But this year’s game, like so many other exhibitions, was as compelling as a cinder block. The American League got up early, got up some more, never trailed, and, when Mariano Rivera came in with two outs in the ninth and the score 7-5, you knew there wasn’t a chance in the world that La Russa’s men would win. Rivera may blow World Series saves, but he doesn’t blow many others. Besides, the American League is on a roll.