Yankees' Aaron Boone delivers MLB fans uncomfortable truth after All-Star swing-off

For about two hours on Tuesday night, the All-Star Game felt like an all-too-familiar Aaron Boone performance for his detractors to mock. The American League, typically dominant in these events, fell offensively flat. Pinch-hitter Brent Rooker broke the silence in the seventh, but it evoked a classic Yankees "fake comeback" more than an actual rally, leaving fans wondering why the thunder hadn't started earlier.

But, by the end of the night — thanks in part to fan favorite (dream trade target?) Steven Kwan playing the game of baseball beautifully — the score had been miraculously leveled, and the game reached unprecedented "extras". Instead of the ghost runner, every Yankee fan's favorite, this one would be decided by a swing-off mini-Derby, featuring three of the NL's top sluggers against a trio of American Leaguers, with three outs a piece to work with.

Unfortunately for the Yankee fans watching with bated breath, Boone found a way to screw this one up, too, using Jonathan Aranda in the third spot instead of the sitting-and-waiting Bobby Witt Jr. of the Kansas City Royals. Still, you'd have to imagine a regular-season swing-off would go better for New York than their current extra-innings road strategy, where they're essentially DOA once the 10th begins.

After the game, Boone revealed he was thinking along the same lines, expecting the semi-inevitable after the pop of the moment in Atlanta. There's a good chance this might be utilized at some point to decide games that matter, especially if there's universal agreement in the coming days that the excitement properly peaked.

Yankees' Aaron Boone thinks All-Star Game swing-off could come to regular season baseball

"There's probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it's in some regular-season mix," Boone noted in Jeff Passan's postgame column. "I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if people start talking about it like that. Obviously, I don't think that should happen, necessarily, or would at any time in the near future. But I've got to say, it was pretty exciting."

He's clearly not advocating for it — he's a baseball purist — but he feels where the wind is blowing. Perhaps that "purist" bent is the reason he can't seem to solve modern regular-season extras? Maybe he's doing it out of subconscious protest?

Regardless, a swing-off between sluggers better suits the Yankees than moving the automatic runner over and piling on in the top half of the frame, then hanging on for dear life with a beleaguered bullpen in the bottom. Plus, we all know that neither extra-innings format will ever reach the postseason. That should maybe tell you all you need to know (but is it really sillier than an NHL shootout?).