Baseball's all-star game no big deal

According to Henry D. Fetter, writing in The Atlantic, baseball's all-star game isn't all that relevant, even for the fans:

It just doesn't seem to matter—as falling television ratings show—down by two thirds since the late 1960s and by half over the last 15 years alone—more than attest. And trying to make the game mean something by introducing the home field advantage payoff for the winning league in 2003 has clearly failed to stem that continuing decline. Last year's game attracted two million fewer viewers than the one in 2002—the infamous game that then acting commissioner Bud Selig called a tie when the teams ran out of players in extra innings.

And why should it? In truth the game is an artifact of a now-vanished era. Started as a Depression-era effort to hype interest in a sport whose fan base was crumbling amidst the economic crisis, the game belongs to a now vanished time when there was no inter-league play, when televised baseball was a scarce commodity (and pretty much confined to broadcasts of your local team or teams), when all-star caliber players tended to stay with one team during the primes of their careers, and if not with one team, then within one league.

I've never been an all-star guy. I can't recall any MLB, NBA, or NHL all-star game that I've seen. I think I might have watched one or two Pro Bowls in my lifetime, but that's about it.