Desperate times call for desperate measures, and these are evidently desperate times. At least Major League Baseball officials have been acting like desperate men.
They have scrambled in their desperation to create gimmicks they hope will raise the television ratings of the All-Star game.
Linking the All-Star game to the World Series hasn’t worked so this year Major League Baseball concocted a new scheme. It devised a contest to determine fans’ favorite moment from All-Star history.
I can’t say that I followed the contest and, in fact, ignored commercials touting it, but from what I can see on the MLB.com Web site different moments were matched against each other, and the winners, as best as I can determine, proceeded to ensuing rounds until two finalists were chosen in online voting.
“Vote for the best All-Star moment,” the heading of the site heralds.
This seems to me as ill-conceived a gimmick as the World Series link, though for different reasons. The Web site, I would think, attracts mostly younger fans. Unless they are avid historians, they are not going to know much about past All-Star events on which to base their judgment.
For example, how many know about the second home run Ted Williams hit in the 1946 game, the one against Rip Sewell’s blooper pitch (everywhere else they called it an eephus pitch; in Pittsburgh we called it a blooper)? It was as good a show as any All-Star game has produced.
The other day Fay Vincent, the former commissioner, related a story Williams had told him about the home run.
During the game, Williams told Vincent, Bill Dickey, the New York Yankees’ catcher, advised him that the best way to hit Sewell’s unusual pitch, was to take two steps forward as the ball was descending to the plate.
That would enable the batter to supply more power to hit a pitch that supplied none of its own. Williams said he didn’t take those steps on the first blooper but did on the next one and drove it into the bullpen for his second homer and fourth hit of the game.
Of course, M.L.B. doesn’t care what Web site viewers know or how they vote. Just vote and click “submit” and, oh yes, watch the game. Feed those ratings.
Eight years ago, Commissioner Bud Selig and his band of fearless FOXies came up with what they thought was a sure-fire solution to the ratings problem.
They told themselves if we link the outcome of the All-Star game to home field advantage in the World Series, they will watch because the game will be so much more meaningful.
The World Series representative from the league that won the All-Star game would have four home games to three for the losing league’s team. By golly, that plan would turn the star-studded exhibition game that fewer and fewer viewers were watching into a star-stuffed exhibition that would have some meat to it.
Home field advantage! Wow. A chance to see Houston’s Michael Bourn and Baltimore’s Ty Wigginton battle ferociously in their brief appearances in last year’s game, as if their teams could benefit from an All-Star win for home field advantage in the World Series.
If Selig were serious about wanting to find a better way of determining home field advantage rather than alternating leagues every year as the practice was pre-2003, I have long suggested a legitimate way of doing it.
Give home field advantage to the league that wins the interleague standings that season. If the leagues tie in wins and losses. Give the advantage to the same league as the year before.
But the commissioner won’t do that because it would do nothing for FOX’s ratings.
Has the link had an impact on FOX’s ratings? Not that can be discerned from the ratings numbers.
The 7.5 rating for last year’s game was the lowest for an All-Star game since ratings were compiled for the games starting in 1967. The 13 share and 12.1 million viewers were also all-time lows.
But to hear FOX talk about ratings now, the numbers suddenly aren’t the important thing.
“There’s no doubt that since this began in 2003 it has resulted in the game itself being played with greater intensity and purpose,” said Lou D’Ermilio, senior vice president of communications for FOX. “It’s managed differently. It’s managed to win. Any All-Star managers have said so. Unlike the past, not every position player plays.”
If I hadn’t known who was on the other end of the phone, I would have thought it was the commissioner. Selig in the last several years has often talked about how much harder and inspired the players have played in their effort to win for their league’s champion.
The similarity is not surprising, though, because Selig and FOX have the same goal: raise the ratings.
In support of his position that recent World Series-linked All-Star games have been better, D’Ermilio pointed out that five of the last eight games, all linked, were decided by one run. Only two of the previous eight games were decided by one run.
Close games don’t necessarily mean better games, but if that’s what they want to believe and that’s what they want to sell, go for it.
But both parts of the FOX deal with M.L.B. have another thought in common. Acknowledging the decline in ratings, they suggest that the way television ratings have declined generally, it’s very likely that the link of the All-Star game to home field advantage in the World Series prevented a steeper drop in the game’s ratings.
Despite what they might think or how they want to spin it, baseball officials decided they had to do more to enhance the All-Star game as a television attraction. Thus, the “best All-Star moment” contest.
M.L.B. held a conference call with the finalists last Tuesday, but I was fortunate enough to miss it. I saw the e-mail about it an hour after it was scheduled.
I missed Cal Ripken, who in his final All-Star game in 2001 moved back to shortstop from third base and hit a home run, and Red Schoendienst, a surrogate for Stan Musial, his long-time teammate stricken with Alzheimer’s, whose 12th-inning home run decided the 1955 game.
This is such a silly contest that if M.L.B. held it again next year, it would probably produce different finalists.
Whether or not M.L.B. and FOX want to resign themselves to reality, the All-Star game isn’t the attraction it used to be. It still beats the All-Star games in the other sports as the only legitimate All-Star game. The baseball game doesn’t exclude basic elements of the games as the other sports do with their All-Star games.
M.L.B. invited comments on its favorite-moment site, and these were two of them:
“At least MLB put the World Series connection to the All Star games. It’s now less of an exhibition than the NBA’s which is a serious junk time joke.”
“I think it’s a shame we’ll never see big name AS starters in crunch time anymore. But I guess that comes with changes in the game. ($ for one) Now it’s an exhibition (no matter how they try to encourage competition), then it was a game that was played and managed to be won.”
So is it or is it not an exhibition? I guess not everybody has received the message.
“JETE” CHEATS FANS
Last Friday Derek Jeter opted out of the All-Star game, saying he didn’t want to “push” the calf injury that 
recently had him on the disabled list. Less than 24 hours later, playing on the same right calf, Jeter lashed five hits, including a home run for his 3,000th hit, in one of the most remarkable hitting displays in years.
Not go to the All-Star game? Jeter should grab the first available airline reservation for Phoenix and get there post-haste. If no seats are available, charter a plane and get there.
Jeter said it was more important for him to rest his leg and not risk reinjuring the calf. After talking to the Yankees’ general manager, manager and trainer, he decided it was more important that he be ready for the resumption of the season.
Of course, the general manager, manager and trainer of the team he plays for are going to recommend that he not go to the All-Star game. He didn’t have to talk to them to know that.
But Commissioner Bud Selig needs to call Hal Steinbrenner, the team’s managing partner, and tell him, using his “best interests of baseball” authority that Jeter has to be in Phoenix.
The union would object but be unable to get an expedited hearing on its grievance fast enough to block the order.
Jeter wouldn’t have to play the entire game or anything close to it. He could bat leadoff, take one turn at bat and play the National League half of the first inning at shortstop, where the fans elected him to start for the American League.
Jeter said Friday he would like to play in the game but was being smart for once in backing out. That might be prudent, but it’s not smart. The smart thing to do is to show up in the opening lineup and let the fans, in Phoenix and on television, salute. I would even consider giving him a standing ovation in my living room.
REPEAT AFTER DODGERS: 1-0; 1-0
With two out in the bottom half of the ninth inning Saturday night, the San Diego Padres and the Los Angeles Dodgers had no runs and one hit between them. The Padres’ Cameron Maybin had singled against Rubby De La Rosa in the fifth inning, and that had been the only hit in the game.
The Dodgers began their ninth without a hit, and Luke Gregerson, the Padres’ fifth pitcher (starter Aaron Harang pitched six hitless innings but used 95 pitches to do it), retired the first two batters. Then Juan Uribe slugged a double to left field and Dioner Navarro singled to center, sending Uribe home for a 1-0 victory.
The night before, the Dodgers also edged the Padres, 1-0, in a game in which each team had five hits. Rafael Furcal singled home the run in the eighth.
The Dodgers’ pair of 1-0 victories marked the first time in this season of 1-0 games that a team had won them on consecutive days. They gave the majors 10 in 12 days and a total of 37 for the season. Twenty-nine 1-0 games were played before the All-Star break last season.
This season teams played 14 1-0 games in the first 50 days and 22 in the next 50 days, with the 37th coming on the 101st day Saturday.
The Minnesota Twins have played the most 1-0 games, winning five and losing two.
BAN COULD MAKE COMEBACK
For many years, Major League Baseball prohibited players from throwing baseballs into the stands. Clubs were concerned about and wanted to avoid possible lawsuits from fans who might be injured by thrown balls.
However, the ban was lifted after the 1994-95 strike when baseball officials wanted to win back fans. They encouraged players to be fan friendly, and that included tossing foul balls and third-out balls into the stands.
After the tragic incident in Arlington, Tex., last week, it would not be surprising if baseball reinstituted the ban.
A fan fell to his death at a Rangers’ game when he toppled over the rail of an upper tier of stands. He was trying to catch a ball tossed to him by Josh Hamilton, the Texas left fielder, whom he had asked to throw him a ball for his 6-year-old son.