MLB should take notes from NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off spectacle

TAMPA — This will begin with your recency bias alert. Because, yes, I do not watch much hockey, and yet I could not take my eyes off the USA-Canada game Saturday night.

You have me at “hello” if you are going to have three fights in the first nine seconds followed by the kind of intensity in a game normally associated with someone in white gloves holding the Stanley Cup under the arena.

But because my day job is never far from my frontal lobe, I was also cognizant of how irrelevant the NBA All-Star festivities felt compared to what the NHL was offering at its break in the regular season.

Naturally, that got me to thinking about MLB’s All-Star Game, which of the four major leagues still is the best game and receives the highest TV ratings. But every year, I see it devolve a little closer to the Pro Bowl.