MLB All-Star Game ratings are in — and John Smoltz has an idea to improve them

The annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game ended with its first-ever “swing-off” on Tuesday. The National League's comeback from an early 6-0 deficit made for a thrilling finish to the annual exhibition.

Just as some loved the ending and others hated it, ratings for the game presented a mixed picture for Fox. An announced 7.2 million viewers tuned in — 3 percent lower than last year but the largest for any event on Fox since the Super Bowl in February.

Viewership peaked with 8.1 million viewers from 9:15 to 9:30 p.m. ET — notably, long before the "swing-off" finish.

Although MLB's version of the All-Star Game is arguably the best of any major professional sports league's already, a disappointing ratings number is sure to inspire debate about how the game can be improved.

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One of the more intriguing ideas came from John Smoltz, Fox's lead analyst for both the All-Star Game and the World Series.

"I am 100 percent confident all the discussions would go away if we had a World versus USA All-Star Game," Smoltz said in an appearance this week on Foul Territory. "I've said it for years. Hockey just went through it. It exploded. I don't watch a lot of hockey — I didn't miss one second of that All-Star Game. I didn't. I thought it was compelling. I thought it was incredible. Guys were playing hurt. Guys missed the second half of their season because of that.

"With that comes the expectation that we're showcasing the greatest athletes on our planet, and we would have a roster that you could talk about on both sides that you ... don't know who's going to win."

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Smoltz might be on to something, but the purpose of the exercise shouldn't be to pit the U.S. against the World. The purpose should be to get the very best players on the field for a single game — a game that many of baseball's best found excuses to avoid this year.

If doing so requires changing the AL-versus-NL format that has existed since 1933, so be it.

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