By John Klima
Staff Writer

The game had a strong story line, complete with a hero and made for Television in an era when the All-Star game was so powerful it made the other two networks inconsequential for the evening. Rookie Tony Perez arrived the night before with his wife and baby and learned he had been bumped from his hotel room. The sleep-deprived rookie then put the longest All-Star game in baseball history to bed with a solo home run in the 15th inning to give the National League a 2-1 victory at Anaheim Stadium 40 years ago this week.

The game had 30 strikeouts and almost as many players who graduated to Cooperstown. All 15 innings took 3:41, which is a torturous nine-inning National League game these days. Long, tedious and boring? Maybe, but the pitching duel drew 55 million TV viewers. One wonders, if Major League Baseball were to have a 15-inning, 2-1 ballgame Tuesday night in San Francisco, would they be as thrilled with the result, the revenue, the exposure and the excitement?

In past eras, the game stood by itself. Now the event needs to be tailored to fit the times. The All-Star game is still a money-making machine, and you can throw Barry Bonds and the supporting cast onto the field and get the TV show, but the energy level has become too predictable. The game sleepwalks.

That is what needs to be remedied. Look back to 1967. There was no tie allowed, and after six innings of a 1-1 game, the pitching staffs combined for another nine. Catfish Hunter pitched the final five innings for the American League and gave up the home run to Perez.

Walter Alston was the manager for the National League, though too modest to admit that he improved his record to 6-2 in All-Star games. He said it had the best mound work he had ever seen in an All-Star game.

Pitching always has an advantage in these things. The National League sent Juan Marichal, Ferguson Jenkins, Bob Gibson, Chris Short, Mike Cuellar, Don Drysdale and Tom Seaver to the mound. Former Angel Dean Chance, then of the Twins, started for the American League, the first of five pitchers who allowed no walks in 15 innings. It didn’t matter that the game began at 4:15 p.m. in California, when the shadows in Anaheim make hitting as friendly as an IRS agent auditing a clubby.

Seaver, a rookie, picked up the victory. Willie Mays didn’t start for the first time in 14 years, taking a seat behind Henry Aaron, Roberto Clemente and Lou Brock. Clemente said hitters couldn’t see breaking balls. Mays said it was the pitching, not the lighting.

The lighting is what needs to be changed about the modern All-Star game. This needs to become less about a game and more about promoting individual stars. It should be about skills as much as home runs. In the age of the Internet and Interleague, it must be repackaged as more than a game, and in doing so, it can rejuvenate the imagination that it once created.

You can’t sell the All-Star game based on competition anymore. There’s too much money, too many careers, too many egos and agents, too few reasons for players to care about winning a game that to them is just another PR event.

What baseball can do is sell its players better and not rely solely on its tradition. It’s really swell that Ted Williams hit a home run to win the 1941 game, though you’d think Ted would be infuriated if you referred to his happy wind-sprint around the bases as a walk-off home run. The All-Star game doesn’t produce memories like it used to, be it Mike Piazza going opposite field one year or Chan Ho Park grooving a farewell fastball to Cal Ripken Jr. You can’t go home and watch Ted Williams play on TV.

Those moments are gone and this game needs to find a way to create new ones. It can’t be in the event itself anymore. It’s too difficult to have a historic moment in one of these things. Baseball could stand to borrow a page from that other league that does everything else so well – you know, the National Hockey League.

While hockey may be booming with its nightly crowds in most cities reaching 15,000 fans, and its national TV deal and web sites flooding money, and it’s excellent leadership from its commissioner and its well-run front offices, the NHL still does one thing right on its All-Star weekend: the skills competition.

This can be the excitement baseball needs. The Home Run Derby is great, but even the NBA does more than the Slam Dunk Contest. Instead of just the Home Run Derby, why not a skills challenge to set it up? How does a base running challenge sound? Let’s play scouts, take out the stopwatch, and time Juan Pierre, Carl Crawford and Ichiro from plate to plate. Let’s have a catcher’s throwing contest. Set up the hoop over second base. Let’s see how many pegs Russell Martin and Ivan Rodriguez can make in 30 seconds.

Let’s have an outfield defense competition. You show us Vladimir Guerrero’s bat, now show us his arm. I’m sure fans would enjoy Guerrero vs. Ichiro throwing from right field to third and right field to home.

Get the nastiest fungo hitter in the league and let’s have infield competition: let Derek Jeter, Jose Reyes, Omar Vizquel show us how to be acrobats at shortstop. The same goes for third base. Show us why David Wright is a Gold Glover. Let him compete. Devise a skill game.

Turn basic drills into a televised video game. Make it short, snappy, punchy and exciting. Pitching duels on a Tuesday night won’t draw as well as a reality show about Shaq running fat kids into the ground. Turn this thing into a showcase of how to play baseball, not just of how to hit a home run, and not just of how to put on a plastic smile. Turn it into a celebration of skill, athleticism, passion and personality.

All you have to do is look at the other sports, where it’s OK that the game is a joke. The only way to make the majority of athletes care about something many see as a chore instead of an honor is to create something potentially beneficial for them. Call it ego, call it street creed, call it pride, or call it turning entertainment into an endorsement deal. But call it anything except showing up for nine-innings of a scripted TV affair. Yes, we know the pitching will dominate. It was true in 1967 and it will be true Tuesday night in San Francisco.

The All-Star game cannot be saved. It is as ancient as stone tables and irrelevant as a dead language. But the event can be saved. Invite all the deserving players, and it doesn’t matter if they play in the game or not. If you’re going to have every club represented, expand the rosters. Give us more players to see. Don’t leave off the guys hitting .340. If it’s an exhibition, why are we cutting players?

Baseball needs to make the All-Star game about more than a baseball game, because the All-Star game itself can never be what it used to be. Think any pitchers will line up, as Catfish Hunter did, to throw five innings on what’s supposed to be an off-day?