Baseball’s All-Star Game produced a pair of predictable developments, both of which you have read here before. You are excused from reading about them again should you choose to pass.

The game, not exactly a thriller, lived down to recent All-Star standards, drawing an all-time television ratings low despite the irresistible, magical link to homefield advantage for the World Series.

When he was commissioner, Bud Selig created the link, saying it would spur the players to play more intensely, making for a more exciting game. I don’t know about you, but I was not tingling with excitement Tuesday night during the American League’s 4-2 victory over the National League.

In fact, I might have nodded off once or twice. Maybe those were the innings when I missed the excitement.

From the looks of the Fox rating, though, it was very likely that Fox viewers nodded off all over the dial. Fox received a 6.4 overnight rating, a share that was 18 percent lower than last year’s 7.8 and lowest ever. Not only has the link failed to create a more exciting game, but it has also failed to stir the ratings, which was Selig’s real intention.

Since Selig is no longer commissioner, we don’t have to listen to him insult our intelligence by boasting how much more intensely the players played the game.

What we do have to hear, though, is the current commissioner’s repetitious replies to reporters’ questions about minority hiring.

When will the second-year commissioner learn that actions speak louder than words? I would like to think Rob Manfred knows that fact, but once more this week he used the same tired words on the issue of diversity in hiring without demonstrating by his actions that he means what he says.

Manfred met with members of the Baseball Writers Association earlier in the day of the All-Star Game, and one of the topics he addressed was diversity in hiring. Instead of addressing specifics, though, Manfred talks about his programs he says are aimed at increasing opportunities for minorities.

His position in San Diego followed the same pattern as he cited the MLB Diversity Pipeline project and the executive search firm MLB has hired to help minorities prepare for interviews.

“It is crucial that when a minority candidate gets an interview, she or he is as prepared as possible,” Manfred said.

When, though, do minorities get interviews? A pipeline is a nice idea, but if nothing is coming out of the other end, the pipeline gets clogged pretty quickly.

Last year when a dozen or so clubs sought general managers, four interviewed mid-level black executives, each club interviewing a different candidate. It was clear that none of the four was going to be hired, but their interviews satisfied the requirements of the so-called Selig Rule. If a club was searching for a person to fill a decision-making position, general manager and manager among them, it had to interview a minority candidate.

The four-team scheme was clearly designed to be an end run around the rule, but Manfred took no action against the four teams, accepting their interviews as valid.

If Manfred has been lobbying teams behind the scenes to hire minorities he has been ineffective. The only executive for whom he is known to have intervened is David Stearns general manager of the Milwaukee Brewers, and he is white. Manfred is said to have pushed the Brewers to hire Stearns because he worked for him in the commissioner’s office.

De Jon Watson did not have the good fortune of working for Manfred. Watson works for the Arizona Diamondbacks as the senior vice president of baseball operations. He is generally considered the best MLB executive who is not a general manager.

While those four mid-level executives were being interviewed last year, no club was talking to Watson. Manfred was not pushing anyone to hire him as general manager. If Manfred ever returned one of my telephone calls, the first question or series of questions I would ask him would be about Watson:

Is he familiar with him and his reputation? Has he ever urged any club to hire him or even interview him? Would it be different if Watson were white?

Watson doesn’t want to be viewed and/or hired as a minority candidate. He is a proud man, but at the age of 50, he doesn’t fit the mold of general managers teams are looking for these days, a young man in his 30s, whose head is filled with analytics and was educated at an Ivy League or Ivy-type school.

Despite his reluctance to be considered a minority candidate, Watson could have used a boost from Manfred. The commissioner, though, evidently has no legitimate interest in the advancement of minorities.

In speaking to the baseball writers Tuesday, Manfred referred to the Atlanta Braves dismissal of Fredi Gonzalez as manager early this season and said,

“The absence of a Latino manager is glaring. There are 30 jobs and there are 30 high-turnover jobs when you’re talking about field managers, and you’re going to have an ebb and flow in terms of diversity, given that there is no central authority sitting above the 30 clubs saying, look, we want to have this makeup among these employees.”

The problem is there’s plenty of ebb but no flow for minorities.