Contrary to popular belief, it isn't Bud Selig's fault the All-Star Game ran out of fuel before the finish line. It's the managers' fault -- but not just Joe Torre and Bob Brenly.

It's actually the fault of a succession of All-Star Game managers who decided over the last few years that this wasn't a game anymore -- it was the Mr. America pageant. Let's watch everybody parade down the runway.

It didn't used to work that way. And we've done the research, with the help of some of our SABR pals.

Where did the starters go?
How come Randy Winn got more at-bats in this game than Barry Bonds? Because, after all the energy wasted on voting -- not to mention all the energy wasted on debating the voting -- most of the starters weren't around much longer than the folks who put on the pregame extravaganza.

Only two starters (Scott Rolen and Jorge Posada) got to make three trips to home plate. So when did that tradition start? About 20 minutes ago. That's when. Check out how many All-Star starters batted three or more times in the last 10 games and you'll see that until last year, it was the majority of them:

2002: 2
2001: 3
2000: 10
1999: 7
1998: 14
1997: 8
1996: 12
1995: 11
1994: 13
1993: 13

Go the distance
As recently as five years ago, Junior Griffey played every inning of the 1997 All-Star Game. In fact, so did Brady Anderson and Ray Lankford that night.

Until very recently, nobody passed out in shock if an All-Star starter played the whole game, because it had been going on that way for years.

In the five All-Star Games Lou Gehrig started, he played the entire game in all five of them.

When Ted Williams hit his famous game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth inning in the 1941 All-Star Game, it was his fifth trip to the plate of the night -- because, like Joe DiMaggio, he played that game from start to finish.

As recently as 1967, six of the American League's eight elected starters played the entire game -- and that one went 15 innings. So obviously, a lot has changed.

SABR's Wayne McElreavy did a study of how often starters went wire-to-wire. We broke them down into five-year periods:

1933-37: 54 (avg.: 11 per game)
1938-42: 44 (avg.: 9 per game)
1943-47: 28 (avg.: 7 per game)*
1948-52: 34 (avg. 7 per game)
1953-57: 33 (avg. 7 per game)
1958-62: 59 (avg. 6 per game)*
1963-67: 37 (avg. 7 per game)
1968-72: 15 (avg. 3 per game)
1973-77: 10 (avg. 2 per game)
1978-82: 13 (avg. 3 per game)
1983-87: 11 (avg. 2 per game)
1988-92: 9 (avg. 2 per game)
1993-97: 7 (avg. 1 per game)
1998-2002: 0 (avg. 0 per game)

(* _ no game in 1945, two games per year from 1959-62.)

Let's play three
You only have to go back to 1986 to find a game in which four different pitchers worked three innings in the same Al- Star Game. In fact, in the 1987 game that went 13 innings, a (gasp) closer -- Lee Smith -- pitched three innings.

But since the '90s, only one pitcher (Greg Maddux, in 1994) has worked three innings in any All-Star Game. And if anyone were ever asked to pitch more than that, they'd undoubtedly file a grievance.

Once upon a time, though, it was almost routine for a starter to go three and beyond.

The sensational All-Star Game history book, "The Midsummer Classic," co-authored by three of our favorite people -- SABR's David Vincent and Lyle Spatz, and Retrosheet founder Dave Smith -- lists all the pitchers who pitched more than three innings in an All-Star Game. Here they are:

6 IP -- Lefty Gomez, AL, 1935

5 IP -- Catfish Hunter, AL, 1967
Larry Jansen, NL, 1950
Al Benton, AL, 1942
Mel Harder, AL, 1934

4 IP -- Lew Burdette, NL, 1957
Johnny Antonelli, NL, 1956
Spud Chandler, AL, 1942
Hal Schumacher, NL, 1935
Lon Warneke, NL, 1933

3 2/3 IP -- Bob Feller AL 1939

3 1/3 IP -- Ray Narleski AL 1958
Joe Nuxhall, NL, 1955
Frank Sullivan, AL, 1955

You can see that no one has pitched more than three innings since 1967. But check out the decline in outings of exactly three innings in recent years:

1968-77: 14 times
1978-87: 15 times
1988-97: 2 times
1998-2002: 0 times

So it wasn't the commissioner who killed this All-Star Game. It was the evolution -- or should we say de-evolution -- of this once-great affair from "baseball game" to "glorified spring-training game" that deserves to get locked up for this crime. And that's a practice that has to change.