How to fix the MLS All-Star Game, and Loons notes

We must begin by acknowledging something that most of us understand: there is no fixing the MLS All-Star Game, or for that matter any other All-Star Game.

The very first All-Star Game was in baseball, in 1933, and it was organized by the sports editor of the Chicago Tribune to coincide with the Chicago World's Fair. Frankly you cannot do better at explaining how outdated of a concept an All-Star Game is, than to start with the sports editor of a newspaper having the influence to be the organizer, and to have the World's Fair be the reason.

It was supposed to be a one-time thing. It was so popular they started doing it every year. From 1959 to 1962 they even held it twice a year. And the reason it was popular was simple: it was the one chance per year, except for the World Series, that fans could see stars from the American League face stars from the National League. This is not a problem any more, in baseball; we have interleague play now.

Over in MLS, the league has had an All-Star Game since its inception, and virtually from the beginning, it's been trying to find a format that provided any kind of entertainment. They've tried East against West and USA against the World. They had the all-stars play the US Men's National Team. And for years and years, they had the all-stars take on a touring European team, an era mostly memorable for the time Caleb Porter and Pep Guardiola got in a spat because the all-stars kept going hard into tackles against Bayern Munich, the equivalent (in Guardiola's mind, at least) of getting called for a late hit in the Pro Bowl.