It seems that every sportswriter worth his salt has weighed in on this past Tuesday’s All-Star Game and its bizarre finish. Now it’s my turn, whether I’m worth my NaCl or not.

Let’s address some points.

Who’s to blame for the game being called after 11 innings tied at 7-7? The popular dart-board target is Commissioner Bud Selig, who is under so much fire already with the impending labor shutdown that he must be behind this as well. As the Grand Poobah of the majors, Selig is the guy with the BUCK STOPS HERE paperweight on his desk, and he must be held accountable for any of baseball’s problems. I don’t think this is one to hang on him, though.

When AL All-Star manager Joe Torre and NL manager Bob Brenly approached the commissioner’s box prior to the 11th inning to let Selig know that they were rapidly running out of players, Selig should simply have said, "You know what? Maybe you should have managed your squads a little better. This is your problem, not mine."

After all, extra-inning games are always a possibility. Torre had nine pitchers on his staff, and Brenly had 10. Each starter went only two innings, even though most were on their regular five-day rotation, and every pitcher on the staff had a day of rest the day before and after the game. Even worse, in the sixth inning Torre used two pitchers — of which one threw only three pitches — leaving him with only four hurlers left, and three of them were closers accustomed to throwing an inning or less. Brenly did the same thing in the seventh, even though he had only three pitchers left (two of whom were closers) in a 7-6 game. What is the commissioner supposed to do about this? We can blame him for a lot of other fiascoes during his tenure, but this was out of his hands.

Should the commissioner have okayed having position players pitch, or allow pitchers who had already finished to return to the game? No on both counts. Most people remember what happened when Texas outfielder Jose Canseco tried to pitch during a 15-1 loss at Fenway in 1993: he blew out his arm and was never quite the same thereafter. No non-pitcher in his right mind would take the mound during this glorified exhibition and risk ruining his career with an arm injury or being struck by a batted ball. Allowing actual pitchers to return to the hill to complete an extra-inning game would also have been a travesty of the rules, and might have injured those players as well. No, it was up to the managers to use their staffs properly, just as they should in any regular-season game that could conceivably expand to 12, 15, or even 19 innings. Hell, both skippers were miked during the game and occasionally conversed from the dugout with the TV announcers in the booth; why didn’t play-by-play guy Joe Buck ever say, "You know, Joe, what are you gonna do if this game goes extra frames? You got some extra pitchers on ice somewhere?" Pitchers of margaritas, maybe. No, once the game advanced to extra innings, the only thing left was to ask the two remaining pitchers — Seattle’s Freddy Garcia and Philly’s Vicente Padilla — to pitch as long as they could. As starters, they should have been well-rested and accustomed to long tours of duty, but the players’ union might have had something to say about this. Also, Padilla reportedly complained of some stiffness during his warm-up tosses, so throwing him out for three or four innings under those circumstances could potentially have jeopardized his season (not that the last-place Phillies are going anywhere this year).

Were the fans treated properly when the decision to call the game was announced? I feel for the poor Milwaukee Brewers PA announcer who was stuck with the gruesome task of announcing prior to the bottom of the 11th that if the game remained a tie at the end of the inning, the contest would be halted without a winner. This was probably where Selig was at fault, because there were so many other ways to inform the fans without inciting them to such anger that the field was littered with debris at the conclusion of the game. One possibility: Torre and Brenly could have taken their rightful lumps and gone out on the field prior to the 11th to announce that they had run out of players and had no choice but to close it down after one more inning. Or, as beat writer Gordon Edes suggested in Thursday’s Boston Globe, perhaps honorary captains Robin Yount (a Brewer legend) and Ozzie Smith (an inductee into Cooperstown next month) should have been the ones to make the announcement. Hell, even former Milwaukee Braves legend Henry Aaron was on hand — who was going to boo him if he came out bearing bad tidings? Any of these options would have done better placating the fans than the mere announcement — without explanation — that the game would end after the 11th if the Nationals didn’t score.

Were the fans that paid up to $175 per box seat robbed by the controversial ending? The lucky folks who got to attend the All-Star Game more than got their money’s worth that night. The pre-game ceremony was quite memorable and introduced a host of former legends of the game, and the tributes given to Teddy Ballgame, late announcer Jack Buck, and Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile were also emotional affairs. In addition, those who saw the game got to see everyone on both rosters play (which is usually not the case), meaning that they saw the best of the best in the majors on one field on one night (with all due respect to Jim Thome, Larry Walker, and others). It was a rich, full night, as the pre-game stuff took over an hour, and the game itself ended nearly three and a half hours after that. Yes, $175 is a lot of money, but not everybody had to pay that. Moreover, if you go to a Broadway show you’ll have to shell out nearly $100, and those productions aren’t nearly as memorable as this All-Star Game was. It was unfortunate that no winner emerged on Tuesday, but does anyone usually even remember the winner or the final score a week after the event? Were these fans scarred for life by not seeing a resolution? It’s an exhibition! Who cares? It was 1:30 a.m. on the East Coast and 12:30 in the morning in the Central Zone when the game ended; how much more could people stand? Certainly kids who stayed up to watch the game were in bed long before the game was called, which is another problem (along with late-night World Series games) that Selig and the owners will ultimately have to address.

Yet if Major League Baseball had wanted to do the absolute right thing, officials should have advised fans to hold on to their ticket stubs, and, as a fair gesture to the disgruntled patrons who left unsatisfied, any who wished should have been able to exchange their stubs for two tickets to the future MLB game of their choice. Seeing as how a strike may be on the horizon — with many fans unlikely to return to the stadiums if it does happen — those tickets would probably never have been cashed in anyway.

Should there have been some other way to decide a winner of the game? Numerous knights of the keyboard have suggested ways that an outright winner of the game could have been determined, including perhaps a rehash of the previous night’s Home-Run Derby, but none of those ideas was realistic. After all, I can only imagine the scene in the respective teams’ clubhouses, with malt beverages flowing freely and relaxation and jocularity the only remaining duties. Try to picture Sammy Sosa and Jason Giambi — both out of the game for a couple of hours and probably in street clothes — being asked to put their unies back on and participate in another long-ball competition. Wasn’t going to happen. The players don’t care enough for the fans (which seems fairly obvious given the impending walkout) or about the outcome (nothing is riding on it) to go above and beyond the bare minimum of performance in this game.

What can be done to ensure that this kind of situation never happens again? Well, this gets kind of dicey, but if perhaps some kind of incentive were provided to the winning squad, the managers would be more likely to manage with some kind of enthusiasm (instead of dispensing with any kind of strategy — i.e., intentional walks, steal signs), and the players would play with the kind of fervor reserved for regular-season games. But what can you offer million-dollar players who already have all the money they need? As some writers have suggested, maybe the winning league should receive the right of home-field advantage in the World Series? Perhaps, but that wouldn’t entice the Tampa Bay or KC representatives to play any harder.

On Tuesday, Torre and Brenly felt obligated to get every single player on their rosters into the game, and at that they succeeded admirably. But I don’t think that had to be the case, because anyone who didn’t play would get over it, and the fans of those players would eventually do the same. It’s bad enough that every team has to have a representative at the All-Star Game even though he may not have the stats that warrant his participation. That rule needs to be abolished, if only to allow the best of the best to fill out the rosters, rather than a guy like Baltimore’s Tony Batista (.269) making the squad at the expense of Anaheim’s Darin Erstad (.310).

Put the best guys on the field, put some kind of incentive on the table for the individual teams to play for, and then you’ll see an All-Star Game that sates the fans’ appetite for excitement and conclusion and will keep them coming back for more. The way we’re going, the outcome of this year’s Midsummer Classic certainly does not bode well for this baseball season’s providing many more doses of excitement, much less any kind of conclusion.

Sporting Eye runs Mondays and Fridays at BostonPhoenix.com. Christopher Young can be reached at cyoung[a]phx.com.