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Perhaps Yogi Berra could say this better, but in the All-Star game, you’ve got to have players who don’t get to play in the game because you might need them to play in the game.

Paul M. Thiele

Los Angeles

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Bud Selig allowed the players to go on strike after the 11th inning of the All-Star game. This is no doubt a harbinger of things to come.

Michael G. Dawson

Rialto

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Baseball’s microcosm of a season with a looming strike was all in a nutshell after Tuesday’s All-Star game.

The final outcome was encompassed in the final score, which included players, owners and fans.

Result: Nobody wins.

Chris R. Johnson

Hawthorne

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Dear Major League Baseball:

Do yourself a favor, keep Bud Selig away from microphones, television cameras and small children.

He is George Costanza, Kato Kaelin, Jim (and Tammy Faye) Bakker, Charlie Brown and Homer Simpson all in one. A dark cloud doesn’t follow him, he is the dark cloud hanging over baseball.

The 2002 All-Star game had no real conclusion. Why is this not surprising? These things just seem to happen ... to Bud Selig.

Kevin Holten

Manhattan Beach

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The ending of the All-Star game was a disgrace, as is the proposed “solution”--to expand the roster. The roster can be expanded to 50 a team, but the same problem will result if the managers try to get every player in the game. Between them, [Bob] Brenly and [Joe] Torre went through 19 pitchers. Once again Major League Baseball has put the interests of a few of its owners and managers above those of the fans and of the game itself.

At the hands of Selig and his minions, the storied “Midsummer Classic” has become just another failed marketing gimmick devoid of any meaning or content.

Charles P. Reichmann

Los Angeles

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Why is anyone surprised that former car salesman Selig would pull a bait-and-switch?

Peter Apanel

Pomona

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On a night when baseball honored its greatest hitter (a man who served in two wars), and during a year when American soldiers have died fighting terrorism, the All-Star game is terminated by an inept commissioner fretting over how a player could possibly get injured in an extra-inning game?!

Disgusting.

Adam Platts

Northridge

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On the one hand they tell us the All-Star game had to be called because the pitchers were tired and didn’t want to get out of rotation for the rest of the season. On the other hand they tell us there will be no rest of the season.

Why not disband pro baseball and draft these guys into the military? Let them work at a real job for a few thousand dollars a month all year long.

Somehow $5 million to $10 million a year plus all imaginable expenses, perks and benefits to “play” a game six months a year won’t seem all that bad.

Mike Glueck

Newport Beach

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Any true baseball fan would have to agree with Selig’s decision. There is no point in risking injury to the sport’s best pitchers just to get a winner and a loser. But maybe the answer for future tied All-Star games is to bring out each team’s heaviest hitters and have a one-round home run derby to decide the game. You’d save the pitchers’ arms while giving the fans a really great finale.

Have we learned nothing from the smashing worldwide popularity of soccer?

Alan Toy

Los Angeles

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I’m not sure I understand all the crying over the All-Star tie: Bonds hit a homer-and-a-half, Schilling struck out a bunch of batters, every player on both sides got into the game and the fans got an extra two innings of baseball.

Does anybody really care who wins these meaningless exhibitions? Certainly the players don’t--witness a grinning Bonds lifting up Torii Hunter after Hunter had robbed him of a round-tripper, and all the other casual banter so deftly picked up by Fox’s “Sounds of the Game”--so why should we? Eleven innings and 14 runs was plenty enough for this fan. Onward.

Joel Rapp

Los Angeles

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If baseball is going to feature an All-Star pregame ceremony that purports to honor America and to remember those who died on Sept. 11, it would be entirely appropriate and fitting for the program to include a “singer” (I use that word advisedly) who actually knows the words to the national anthem.

Rebecca S. Hertsgaard

Anaheim

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As a result of Tuesday’s All-Star game ending in a tie, it seems appropriate that Commissioner Selig was unable to determine what to do with the Ted Williams All-Star MVP award at the same time that Ted Williams’ family is unable to decide what to do with Ted Williams.

Duaine Osborne

La Mirada

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Can we freeze all the people involved in Major League Baseball and start over?

Doug VonBerg

Costa Mesa