Fox, Bud Selig happy with All-Star game format

Reporting from Phoenix — The players might not like the All-Star game determining home-field advantage in the World Series, but the president of Fox Sports wonders what the fuss is all about.

“It’s not Armageddon,” Ed Goren said Tuesday.

In eight years since Fox influenced baseball to link the result of the All-Star game to the World Series, the team with the home-field advantage has won the Series five times. That hardly constitutes unfairness, Goren said, and so he would like to stick with an All-Star game format in which he sees more of such plays as the stolen base and hit-and-run.

Under the “This Time It Counts” format, ratings have generally increased, and Fox sells out advertising at rates rivaling those charged for the league championship series.

“Madison Avenue absolutely loves the All-Star product,” Goren said.

So does Commissioner Bud Selig, who, during his annual All-Star game question-and-answer session, did not apologize for soliciting the opinion of Fox.

“Doing things to help your television partners is not unconstitutional,” Selig said.

In other off-the-field news Tuesday:

--With the NFL and NBA in the midst of lockouts, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Assn. said he hopes baseball will reach a new labor agreement by the end of the World Series.

The current agreement between players and owners expires Dec. 11. The two sides have met for negotiations on a weekly basis since spring training, and union chief Michael Weiner said he hopes for an agreement by the end of the World Series, so that the off-season focus can be on player movement rather than labor negotiations.

“In 2006, it was very productive for us to be done before the signing season,” Weiner said. “There’s a lot of benefit to everybody to get it done on that kind of schedule.”

--Selig and Weiner each said major realignment is off the table. Weiner said the players want five teams in each division and 15 teams in each league so that each team has an equal chance to reach the playoffs. If the Houston Astros move from the NL Central to the AL West, each division would have five teams.

With 15 teams in each league, an interleague game would be played every day. In interleague play, Selig said, he would like to see the designated hitter in NL parks and pitchers hitting in AL parks so fans could see an alternate style of play.

--Selig said he expected baseball to add two wild-card teams to the playoffs and said he has heard more support than expected for those two teams to play a one-game round rather than a best-of-three. Weiner said players would not necessarily oppose that move, since a playoff appearance sometimes comes down to the final game of the regular season.

--Selig also said baseball would soon announce a “very modest” expansion of instant replay and scoffed at suggestions the All-Star game has lost its luster, or that players have skipped the game at an alarming rate.

“You’d think we were calling up guys from Omaha,” he said.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com

twitter.com/BillShaikin