Major League Baseball has finally come to its senses.

After 13 years of what became a farce, Major League Baseball has abandoned the Bud Selig rule that the All-Star game would determine home-field advantage in that season’s World Series. It was implemented after the 2002 All-Star game ended in a tie with no bench players or relief pitchers left on either team.

Selig, the former commissioner, wanted to make the All-Star game count for something, so he forced the rule change of it deciding which league would play four home games at home in the World Series. Bad idea for several reasons.

One, it happened more times than not that the World Series team with the worse won-lost record had the home field. Two, it did not make the All-Stars play any harder, because most of them were on teams that weren’t going to the Fall Classic anyway. And three, the TV ratings continued to plummet, so the marketing phrase “This Time It Counts” had no gravitas.

All-Star managers could not take the game seriously as long as fans picked most of the players in a popularity vote. Remember when Kansas City zealots united to stuff the ballot box and almost resulted in eight Royals starting for the American League, when some of their favorite players did not even deserve to be on the All-Star team?

Before Selig changed the rule, the home field alternated each year between the American and National League representatives, regardless of which had the better won-lost record. That was more for convenience so teams in contention could prepare, no matter their final winning percentage, to open the Series at home or on the road. That made it easier to ready ball parks and print tickets.

In this day and age of technology, no team needs that much preparation, and the only fair way to decide home field advantage just like the playoffs determine where each series begins . . . by who has the better record. Now, the World Series will use the same simple formula. Among the two teams that make it, the one with the higher winning percentage will have the home field to start. Period.

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