Start the season with the All-Star Game
Looking to capture people’s attention? You can’t beat this idea. Follow the blueprint baseball followed after the strike in 1981. Get your stars together. Then restart your season with the All-Star Game.
This idea was thrown out there by an agent recently after Adam Silver suggested the NBA might try to find a way to play some sort of All-Star exhibition to give people something to watch in these difficult times. Whenever baseball resumes in midsummer, this agent said, “baseball should play the All-Star Game on Opening Day.”
His logic is sound: So much of the value of Fox’s TV deal centers around the All-Star Game and the postseason that obviously, the network would be highly motivated to drive this idea. And even though it couldn’t be a normal All-Star Game, with selections based on a season that never happened, that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
A lot of questions would come attached, of course. What would the sport do about All-Star incentive clauses? How would they pick these teams? Would there be a Home Run Derby? Would it even be right to look at this as the official 2020 All-Star Game? But one of the big objections the schedule-makers might have — that there would be no time for an All-Star “break” when there were so few days remaining to play what’s left of the season — could be addressed by following the model laid down in 1981.
This was how the ’81 season resumed after the strike: A mini-spring training. Then the All-Star Game on a Sunday night. Then the season resumed the next day! So there was no All-Star “break.” There was just a major “Event” (with a capital E) to welcome baseball back. And after months with no sports, everyone will need one of those star-studded “Events” this year more than ever. They could even call it “the All ‘Start’ Game,” quipped one TV executive.