If only Commissioner Bud Selig would be honest with baseball’s fans, its owners, executives and players and the news media but mostly with himself, he would acknowledge that he has played toesies with Fox television long enough, and now it’s time to be honest and go legitimate.

I’m talking about Selig’s silly idea of linking the All-Star game to homefield advantage in the World Series. You might have seen a mention or two about that idea in this space since it was implemented in 2003.

I bring it up again now because my idea for a replacement plan is based on a particular standing at the end of the season. A replacement plan is needed, I believe, because the All-Star link is a farce. The All-Star game is an exhibition game, a game totally unrelated to events of the season or post-season. I have never heard anyone say otherwise.

But through Wednesday, 297 games had been played that do mean something …

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When the Boston Red Sox were stymied in their attempt to hire their first choice as manager of the team for the 2012 season, they made a foolish and disastrous decision to hire Bobby Valentine despite warnings of the potential peril of taking that step. A last-place finish later, they fired Valentine and got their previously elusive first choice.

In a conference call this week, as a member of a committee delegated to choose the major league manager of the year as awarded by the Pittsburgh Rotary Club in honor of Chuck Tanner, I plan to vote for the Boston manager, John Farrell.

There are other strong candidates, but in my view Farrell is the strongest. In his first year with the Red Sox, he managed them from worst to first and back to the playoffs after a three-year absence.

Other worthy candidates include Terry Francona of Cleveland, whose unwarranted dismissal in Boston put the Red Sox on the road from worst to first. Also to be considered are …

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The confluence of a series of home runs and other related events the past week stirred memories and thoughts of past home runs and other related events.

Featured in these developments were Chris Davis, Brady Anderson, Barry Bonds and Wladimir Balentien.

By slugging his 50th and 51st home runs, Davis tied and broke Anderson’s head-scratching Baltimore Orioles’ franchise record and rekindled the long-dormant debate over how Anderson hit all of those home runs in 1996.

By hitting his own pair of home runs, Balentien raised his total to 57, breaking Sadaharu Oh’s legendary Japanese record of 55 and prompting another kind of question: Why hasn’t anyone raised the steroids question?

Maybe it’s because baseball people and fans learned that it’s not the players who are juiced but the balls. In June, the Associated Press reported …

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