A solution to the All Star Mess

In 1968, I was in broadcasting grad school at Syracuse and had done some intern research work for one of the noted graduates; as a reward he scored me a couple of tickets to the second all star game that year. They were in deep right field in Fenway. I had worked for WBOS a couple of years earlier, so stayed with friends. I wish my date had been more impressed but the game was great; Koosman came in to end it by striking out Yastremski to finish out a 1-0 tilt.

A pick-up game between the best players in each league, with matchups you never saw, and guys who wanted to win and took losing personally, was a "midsummer's classic".

In the ’60s and ’70s, before free agency, fancy agents, and fear of injury, the players wanted to play and wanted to beat the other guy and the games were worth watching. These were not TV exhibitions, they were baseball games. They were what interleague play dreamed of being.

Fast forward to 2002 when Bud Selig (It's really my daughter's team) decreed a 7-7 tie because they ran out of players, having used up the mandatory one-inning cameos for all.

And now the All Star game is politically polluted.

So here's what we should do.

Select the players. Send them a plaque. Hold, and televise, a videogame version.
We'll call it the Ray Fosse memorial Midsummer's Classic Event.
No one will get hurt, or overstressed.
No one will have to face questions about why they don't want to play, or whose starting the last day before. And since it's not in a real city, no politics.

Problem solved.