This week’s Major League Baseball All-Star Game got the lowest TV ratings in the history of the so-called “mid-summer classic,” which proves that Lincoln was right: you just can’t fool all the people all of the time—even when they are baseball fans. The All-Star Game was originally devised as a dream competition in which the best players from the American and National League would play a game that was hard-fought and full of the spectacular exploits of the best players alive. For decades it was like that, too, until sky-rocketing salaries and America’s culture of celebrity turned a large proportion of the players into egomaniacal, self-promoting monsters.

Suddenly, players made it clear that if they weren’t going to play, they weren’t going to give up a three-day break just to put on a show for fans—you know, those insignificant, cheering, merchandise-wearing fools who pay the players salaries.

Then the managers of the All-Star squads started making their priority getting everyone into the game, rather than using the vast talent at their disposal to win the game. The constant pitching changes and substitutions leached all intensity and flow out of the exhibition, and usually resulted in the least of the talents on the squads being the very ones on the field when the excitement should have been at its highest, when the score was close and the game was still in doubt. One All-Star manager, the A.L.’s Jim Frey, once had to let a helpless pitcher make the final out in the 9th inning with the potential tying run only a base-hit away.

Interest in the All-Star game, even on the part of baseball fanatics, started to wane. Nobody cared about putting on a good show for the fans. Never mind preserving the integrity of competition by putting the best talent on the field— just make sure no millionaires feel slighted.

When the 2002 game ended in an extra-inning tie because neither manager had any players left on the bench—an act of gross mismanagement that rarely occurs in a real game, despite much smaller regular season rosters—even the slow-witted baseball suits figured out that the game was in trouble. The next year, the All-Star Game “counted”: the league that won would gain the home field advantage in the World Series, a significant advantage.

The rosters for the All-Star Game were expanded even more, on the theory that the managers could keep some players in reserve to avoid the awful 2002 scenario. And what happened?

By the 9th inning of this week’s game, Yankee manager Joe Girardi had used up all but one of his position players. It was a two-run game, eminently winnable, except that Girardi had already eliminated his options by making his top priority getting the players into the game and avoiding bruised egos. In any normal close game in the 9th inning, a lumbering baserunner like David Ortiz, who had singled with one out, would be immediately taken out for a pinch-runner. But Manager Girardi chose not to use his one player, the slightly faster Alex Rodriguez, for one of several possible reasons. He might need to pinch-hit with A-Rod later. A-Rod might have announced that he didn’t feel like playing that night. Girardi might have felt he had to keep one player in reserve in case the game became tied and went into extra-innings (though the responsible time for this concern was long before he used up all his other All-Stars). Or maybe he just didn’t give a damn about winning the game.

That would be my vote.

Because there was no pinch-runner for Ortiz, what should have been a single by the next batter became a rare out, when the Red Sox slugger was forced at second base on a ball that dropped safely in the outfield, a hit with almost anyone else running. Then Toronto catcher John Buck came to the plate as the potential tying run. Buck is not even a star, just a player who had a pretty good first half of the season. Nobody, maybe not even his mother, was happy to see the All-Star game come down to him.

Ah, but on the bench was Alex Rodriquez, he of the nearly 600 home runs, the player generally thought to be on the way to being baseball’s all-time career home run king! This was why Girardi hadn’t run for Ortiz, the sly fox! A-Rod could pinch-hit, setting the stage for a dramatic and historic game-tying, last-ditch, pinch-hit homer that would become a part of baseball lore forever, and burnish Alex Rodriguez’s legend! This is why fans used to love the All-Star Game, exactly for moments like this!

Girardi let Buck bat, and he made the final out with baseball’s most honored and highest-paid player sitting on the bench. He didn’t have another catcher, you see. He had used them all.

And, of course, he didn’t give a damn.

The duty of Major League Baseball and all of its personnel is to put on a good show for the fans. That is why it is called an “exhibition.” The game is not for the players, and any player who doesn’t accept that should be kicked off the squad. Putting on a good show requires playing to win; for the manager, it means using the large supply of talent at his disposal to make the game competitive, exciting, worth rooting for, and fun.

That isn’t what happened this week, and it is a disgrace. The weak TV ratings should be no surprise, and if the fans have any self-respect, the ratings next year will be worse. There is no reason for fans to give a damn about who wins the All-Star Game, if the participants don’t.