That article was a JOKE!!!!
I quote:
"Fans are more fed up now than ever. The All-Star game showed once again that baseball doesn't really care about the fans."
YEAH - the fans would have been really happy if one of THEIR team's star players injured himself and wasn't able to perform well in the second half of the season!
A sellout crowd in Milwaukee departed in disgust, many chanting "Bud must go!" and "Let them play!" when commissioner Bud Selig called off the game after 11 innings with the score 7-7.
Baseball games don't end in ties. They don't end after 11 innings. They don't end when the clock strikes midnight. They end when someone wins.
WHAT - Exhibition games end in ties all the time, just ask anyone who has ever spent some time at spring training about TIES!
The managers said they ran out of pitchers and didn't want to risk injuries. Why didn't they conserve their pitching earlier in the game, plan for the possibility of extended extra innings, play the game as if it meant something? Baseball charged fans plenty for this game, then acted is if it were doing them a favor.
NEWSFLASH - In 1993, the crowd at Camden Yards jeered as AL manager Cito Gaston of Toronto let Blue Jays closer Duane Ward wrap up a 9-3 win while Baltimore's Mike Mussina warmed up in the bullpen. Since then it has been an unspoken rule to get all players into the game.
"They treated it like it was a meaningless game," said David Cuscuna of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "They're telling the fans this game doesn't matter.
HELLO - This game DOESN"T matter. It is simply an exhibition of the games most loved and talented. In the days before free agency, this game did have a certain meaning. Players treated it like a game that had some signifigance and played it that way. In the years since, it has become much les meaningful, with players switching leagues almost every year.
BOTTOM LINE - Who cares!?!?! It was a very good game to watch, only in the US do we always feel the need for a "winner" and "loser", even in a game that does not count for anything. In the rest of the world ties are commonplace in some sports. Heck, look at hockey, ties were part of the game for years but now that it is becoming a more popular sport in the US they had to change their system to allow for more definitive conclusions, ties are not good enough. Now we have to have regulation ties and the like.
Everyone should just chill out a lot!
