Owners Approve Move to Spark All-Star Game

If major league owners have their way, Mike Scioscia will manage the All-Star game this year with the World Series in mind.

Owners voted unanimously Thursday to award home-field advantage in the World Series to the league that wins the All-Star game. The team with home-field advantage has won the last eight World Series that extended to seven games, including Scioscia’s Angels last year.

The change requires approval from the players’ union. Currently, home-field advantage rotates between the American and National League.

Commissioner Bud Selig said the change “energizes” an All-Star game that has increasingly evolved into a meaningless exhibition, with managers and players less concerned with victory than with ensuring every player gets into the game.

“That isn’t the way I grew up watching the game,” Dodger Chairman Bob Daly said.

Paul Konerko of the Chicago White Sox suggested owners simply wanted to avoid last year’s controversial All-Star game tie, most memorable for Selig shrugging his shoulders as the managers told him they had had run out of pitchers in the 11th inning

“How many times is it going to wind up a tie?” Konerko said. “It was doing pretty good the way it was. I don’t think we need to start tinkering it to make it the seventh game of the World Series.”

-- Bill Shaikin

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Baseball wants to speed up the time of games once again, and will tell pitchers to throw more quickly and batters to wander away from the plate less often.

Last season, relief pitchers were given 2 minutes 25 seconds to warm up from the time they crossed into fair territory. This season the 2:25 countdown will start as soon as the reliever is signaled to enter the game.

In other news from the owners’ meetings, the league formally adopted a minimum age of 14 years for bat boys.

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Gary Carter will be the first player to go into baseball’s Hall of Fame with a Montreal Expos’ logo on his cap.

Carter had expressed an interest in having his plaque adorned with a Mets’ cap -- the team he won the 1986 World Series with and now works for -- but said he wasn’t upset at the Hall’s announcement.

The Hall consults players about the choice of cap.

From Associated Press