It used to matter tons more than it will ever count in the future

To continue the thought, something else occurred to me. Interestingly enough, it was prior to the elimination of the reserve clause when the players truly played the All-Star game like it mattered. But long before "This time it counts", it stopped mattering as much as it used to. "This time it counts" is a cheap way to try to regain what has been lost forever.

Which is not to say that it was qualitatively better back then. Maybe it's wrong for this game to matter so much, and maybe player freedom (free agency) has helped bring about that change.

What it shows is that you can't take an exhibition game and manufacture it's importance. For mixed reasons, the game result used to be the most important thing simply for pride's sake. Now it no longer is, and to think you can replace that with some gimmick like home field advantage for game 7 of the WS is preposterous, sort of like the Wild Card...