After last year's All-Star Game ended in an extra-inning tie, many solutions were proposed to restore the game's luster. Major League Baseball settled on this one: In a two-year experiment, the league that wins the All-Star Game will get home-field advantage in the World Series.

I have two responses to this decision: First, I don't like it -- for any number of reasons. Second, I do like the fact that the players and owners worked together to arrive at an agreement.

Selig could have told the All-Star managers: "Manage this game as if you're managing one of your games to win a pennant."

Plenty of players I talked to don't like the idea, but they were willing to try it because the owners wanted to. There is a history of mistrust between the players and owners, so I'm glad to see the two sides working together to attempt to improve the game (although this particular decision was misguided).

Because the players were willing to try this, I believe the owners need to be willing to give the players a voice regarding other issues they want addressed. These include additional wild-card teams and regular-season scheduling (such as playing games after all-night travel). I like to see this spirit of cooperation, and the owners need to reciprocate.

But I don't like this so-called solution at all. It raises questions rather than answering them.

Questions and alternatives
How many players on All-Star rosters will be in the World Series? Not many. Home-field advantage in the World Series is too significant to attach to a midseason game played by guys from every MLB team, most of whom won't be playing in October. The past eight Game 7s were won by the home team. And the team with home-field advantage has won 15 of the past 17 World Series.

There are so many scenarios that make this a bad decision. Let's say it's a close game in the late innings, and most of the big stars are out of the game. What if the last player selected to one team and and the last pitcher selected to the other end up deciding home-field advantage for the Series?

Ideally the biggest stars should decide the game. But even then, they might not get to the Series, so how much sense does this "solution" make? And what if a player makes an error to lose the game in the ninth inning? With so much at stake, that player would be viewed much more harshly.

There are alternatives that would have served the game far better. In fact, why not give home-field advantage to the league that wins the Home Run Derby? To me, that would have made more sense. But better yet, commissioner Bud Selig could have told the All-Star managers: "Manage this game as if you're managing one of your games to win a pennant."

That's what the game's managers should have been told long ago. MLB should have seen the possibility of last year's scenario coming years ago. There's no need to get every person on the All-Star roster into the game. The top players should play until the game is decided. That doesn't mean there can be no substitutions, but substitute the better players judiciously.

A matter of pride
I played the entire All-Star Game several times. The first year I started the game -- in Atlanta in 1972 -- I drove in the winning run in the bottom of the 10th and won the MVP. Ted Williams once won an All-Star Game with an extra-inning home run. Obviously, that has changed, and the manager's goal has become not winning the game but merely getting everyone in. Last year's fiasco could have been avoided if this had been addressed sooner.

In the past, winning the game was a matter of pride -- the National League really wanted to beat the American League and vice versa. That isn't the case now because more players change leagues today. So the intensity and the league pride aren't the same.

I played in 10 All-Star Games for the National League, and we won all 10. Then, each league had a president who would emphasize before the game, "You're not here to have a good time, you're here to represent your league. So let's go out there and prove that the NL is better than the AL." That had an impact on us.

Veteran All-Stars like Willie Mays and Hank Aaron emphasized the same point to the younger players -- that the purpose of the game was to win.

Today, there are no league presidents. It would be tough for Bud Selig to go into the AL locker room and say, "Go get 'em, guys" -- and then move over to the NL locker room and say, "Go get 'em, guys."

Nothing wrong with Series as it was
So what should decide home-field advantage in the World Series?

You could make a case for the team with the most wins, but the leagues play different schedules. So I like the system MLB just switched from -- alternating home-field advantage between each league from year to year. That's the way it's been ever since the Series started in 1903.

With this change, MLB is trying to make the All-Star Game more appealing. But it wasn't necessary. Baseball's Midsummer Classic is unique in that it's the only professional All-Star Game in which fans see the same game they see everyday throughout the season -- except the best players are playing in it.

That's the point that should have been emphasized to players to give them incentive to play: You have the only true All-Star Game, so play it like an All-Star Game, not an exhibition.

With the NFL's Pro Bowl, there isn't nearly the same intensity because players need to avoid injury. Same with the NHL. In the NBA, five guys can't play as a basketball team in one day, so the game features lots of individual performances with little defense.

Last year revisited
As I said last year, Selig could have done something to send the fans home with a real outcome. For instance, a home-run contest could have decided it. Go through the lineup, and the team with the most homers wins it. Do something to give fans their money's worth.

MLB had lots of options, but there was little forward thinking or preparation for the worst-case scenario. So when the managers ran out of pitchers last year, all Selig could do was throw his hands up and say, "It'll have to end in a tie." That was the biggest joke to me, because baseball doesn't end in ties.

Something else that got lost last year was the non-awarding of the All-Star Game MVP, which had been named after Ted Williams for the first time for the '02 game. Baseball does something in the name of one of the greatest players ever, who had just passed away, and then the award -- the first Ted Williams Award -- isn't given to anyone. It upsets me even now to think about.

An analyst for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Hall of Fame second baseman Joe Morgan won back-to-back World Series with the Reds. He contributes a weekly column to ESPN.com.