The Marlins and the All-Star Game lead to some thinking

The All-Star Game is a popular annual event and Miami Marlins players will be participating. The All-Star Game however may be more of a detriment than a positive and it may be negatively affecting The Fish. It may make sense to analyze the situation more carefully as it does in fact seem to be a bigger deal than it may seem at first glance.

Is the All-Star Game a detriment to the Miami Marlins?

The American League and the National League are leagues in name only. They're both a part of Major League Baseball and any type of division is just for show. There's no rivalry between the two "leagues", regular "interleague" play and players are regularly traded and signed in free agency between leagues.

It wasn't always this way, the National League came first in 1876 and the American League came second in 1901. The two leagues were trying to put each other out of business. The World Series was created with the idea that if one league keeps losing, it will ultimately go out of business. The All-Star Game was created initially as a benefit game in 1933. It was a success, so it became an annual event.

The whole point from the beginning however was to again see which league is better. Let's look at the situation objectively: we have two makeshift teams who will never play again. They will only play one game. These teams are voted in by the fans, turning it into a popularity contest more than an actual selection of the best players. In order to make it better for less popular teams, we now have players from every team added to the game.

Can you imagine being a player who wasn't voted into the game, but get selected because it's obligated and you're representing your team? It just seems weird to me. Making things worse, there's the added (though small) chance of injury and just a general feeling of complete irrelevance. Who cares which team wins? Miami Marlins CF Jazz Chisholm Jr. is one of the best OF's in the game, and he will only get in because of the "every team" rule. How's that fair?

Why not just remove the All-Star Game and replace it with more events that are similar to the Home Run Derby?