CHICAGO -- That anguished cry you heard in the eighth inning last night was Bobby Cox screaming, "BRING IN SMOLTZ, DAMMIT!!!''

Did the players care any more about the outcome of this year's All-Star Game because home-field advantage was on the line? Did Mike Scioscia and Dusty Baker manage any differently? And most importantly, did more fans watch the game?

The friendly folks with the Nielsen ratings will answer the last question, but let me answer the first two this way. Roger Clemens outraced a hurricane just so he could throw 16 pitches while Scioscia argued with an umpire over a call.

	Garret Anderson went 3-for-4 with a double and a home run in the AL's 7-6 victory.

I'm not sure the last time a manager cared enough to do that in an All-Star Game, but it probably was about the same time something worked out exactly according to Bud Selig's plans.

"At the end of the game, there was a little more intensity the way we were coming back,'' Yankees first baseman Jason Giambi said. "Guys were having good at-bats. It was definitely an advantage for us to win because we weren't supposed to get home field this year. And more guys stayed around to watch the end of the game.''

That's a considerable change from recent years when players left for the airport even before Tim McCarver had belabored his first point.

Those who stayed saw a whale of a game, with the American League rallying to win the game by scoring three runs in their final at-bat against one of the National League's best closers. Given a 6-4 lead in the eighth inning, Dodgers closer Eric Gagne gave up a one-out double to Garret Anderson, a two-out double to Vernon Wells and a two-out, two run, pinch-hit home run to Texas third baseman Hank Blalock that decided the game and gave the American League a 7-6 win and home-field advantage for the World Series.

I think the Yankees just voted Blalock a World Series share.

"Whoever gets into the World Series and if it goes seven games and they win,'' Giambi said, "they'll have to send Hank a 12-pack of something.''

Meanwhile, Atlanta is going to add a new area code to handle all the angry calls to talk radio.

"This is what the change was for, to have people talking about it,'' Atlanta closer John Smoltz said.

There was significant opposition to the new home-field advantage twist but I think more people would support the change if Fox hadn't run those incessant commercials with the endlessly annoying slogan, "THIS TIME IT COUNTS!!!''

"That was kind of insulting to the players, implying that we hadn't cared before,'' Smoltz said. "I know it was just a slogan but they could have come up with something different. It was a slap in the face. And after awhile, people began joking about it.''

Not many players support the rule, but they never support any idea that originates with ownership. Whether the players agree with it or not though, at least one 40-year-old pitcher considered it important enough to fly in Tuesday morning.

Clemens, added to the roster Monday morning in the Barry Zito debacle, nearly couldn't make it to Chicago because of Hurricane Claudette's approach to the Texas shore. With winds kicking up and canceling flights near his lake home there, he was forced to race an hour and a half to College Station -- he drove, he said, "about as fast as I throw'' -- where he caught a private jet and arrived in Chicago a couple hours before the game. He said the home-field advantage rule was a factor.

"For the American League, it's important to kind of steal one,'' Clemens said before the game. "I think it's the National League's turn to have the home field, so we can really swipe it from under their feet by playing well tonight.''

Now, that's the approach we were looking for. That's the attitude players had when they really cared about the All-Star Game -- "Let's kill those no-good baby-killing, flag-burning, fluoridated water-drinking SOBs!!!'' -- and that's the intensity Selig and baseball wanted to return to the game.

It won't return overnight, but this was a good start.

The game definitely was managed a little differently than in recent years. A dozen players didn't get into the game and nine starters had at least three at-bats. That was disappointing to the players on the bench, but it was a most welcome change for fans who want to see more of the players they voted onto the team and who want to see more of a game and less of an exhibition.

Scioscia, in fact, said he kept Blalock in reserve later than he would otherwise because he wanted to avoid matching him up against Houston reliever Billy Wagner in the seventh inning. "We wanted to get by that one in particular and try to save him.''

Really, the game couldn't have worked out better for Selig. We saw five home runs. We saw Clemens pitch a scoreless inning in his final All-Star Game. We saw Bonds bat three times. We saw Anderson nearly hit for the cycle. We saw the biggest comeback for a win in nearly 50 years.

And more importantly, we didn't see some other things. We didn't see Bonds clowning around with an opponent during the game. We didn't see managerial moves made just to soothe the sensitive feelings of a player earning $15 million. We didn't see Mike Williams and his 6.44 ERA. And most importantly of all, we didn't see Selig huddling with his advisors.

"It's amazing to me how closely the game mirrored last year's,'' Smoltz said. "If we tied it in the ninth inning and then I did my job in the ninth and it goes into the 12th inning, we could have been in the same situation as last year.''

Ah, but there was one notable difference.

This time, someone won.

Jim Caple is a senior writer for ESPN.com.