Rotation change likely

Commissioner Bud Selig says alternating between leagues isn't important.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- Baseball might abandon its long-standing policy of alternating All-Star sites between National League and American League cities and award the 2007 game to another NL city, commissioner Bud Selig said Tuesday.
Minutes after officially announcing Pittsburgh would host its second All-Star game in 12 years in 2006, Selig said he expects to reveal the 2007, 2008 and 2009 sites later this summer.
With San Francisco, Arizona, Cincinnati, Philadelphia and San Diego all playing in new or relatively new ballparks and St. Louis to follow in 2006, one NL city would have to wait until 2018 for an All-Star game should baseball stay with its traditional rotation.
By contrast, only the refurbished Anaheim Angels ballpark and Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg won't have been All-Star sites among the newer AL parks, once Detroit stages the 2005 game.
Changing times
"I don't believe that it [the rotation] is as important as it used to be," Selig said. "I think the important thing is to try to be fair. In a perfect world, you would alternate NL and AL, but it's more important to reward franchises, I think, that really need to have the game because of their venue. There are so many great new ballparks, and that's the nice part."
The hard part, he said, it deciding which cities must wait, especially when teams such as Kansas City already have waited more than 30 years for a game.
"What I'd like do even during the course of this summer is to at least award the games for 2007, 2008 and 2009 so they have enough time to get to work on it," Selig said. "There are a lot of cities that have new ballparks and have an intense desire to have an All-Star game. I'll just have to be as fair as possible."
Phoenix and San Francisco also wanted the 2006 game, which was awarded to Pittsburgh partly to pump up the Pirates' slumping attendance. Their average crowd has dropped by 10,000 per game since PNC Park opened in 2001, even though the riverfront ballpark is widely regarded as one of baseball's best venues.
Pirates managing general partner Kevin McClatchy was "relentless" in pursuing the game, Selig said, sometimes to the point of being overly intense.
"I made the decision, and I meant what I said that the competition was incredible and there will be a lot of disappointed people," Selig said. "I have to try to be fair. I understand they had a game 12 years ago, but they met all the criteria other than that. They have a gorgeous ballpark ... and Kevin McClatchy was about as tenacious as you can get."
Ticket demand
With 38,496 seats, PNC Park is the majors' second smallest ballpark to Boston's Fenway Park, and the Pirates hope the demand for All-Star tickets will be so great that season ticket sales will increase dramatically starting next year.
"Why did we get the 2006 All-Star game? Because we have the best ballpark in America," McClatchy said.
Selig downplayed the helping-hand theory, emphasizing Pittsburgh got the game because it put on an excellent All-Star show in 1994 -- when the NL won 8-7 in 10 innings -- and will do so again in 2006.
The city's compact downtown means the players, support staff, baseball executives and sponsors can be housed in downtown hotels, within walking distance of the ballpark.
"It [the 12-year lapse] was something that gave me pause because I do have a raft of cities that we're trying to figure out how to give All-Star games but, given PNC Park and given everything else, I just felt it was the right thing to do," Selig said. "It had nothing to do with charity. If PNC Park didn't exist, I wouldn't be here today."
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