Wake me up and see if I still care.

The wins, the losses, the home runs: See if any of it really – I mean really – makes a difference.

Yeah, the Major League All-Star game is Tuesday. Hooray!

See if I care one bit more now that this time, it supposedly counts. At least those commercials are gone.

Not gone are the Home Run Derby, fan voting and, of course, the dumber-than-dumb fact that whichever league wins the game – and if you’ve been keeping count, it’s been the American League the past 10 years – gets home-field advantage for the World Series.

All of this is supposed to be for the fans, by the way – that way Joe Average and his brother John Regular Guy actually find an interest in the three days of events.

That Fan Q. Public is supposed to get on the Internet and vote for his or her favorite players, not those that are most deserving. Yeah, and that’s always worked out since there are more Yankees/Red Sox/Mets players on the All-Star teams than the extra crowd who shows up at Devil Rays games to see Scott Kazmir pitch.

I don’t know where MLB gets off saying this is for the fans.

Why? Because a fan wins a house when their designated player wins the Home Run Derby, or because now that the outcome is forcing the players to actually try, fans are supposed to actually pay attention?

Geez. When did it get so bad? When did it get so complicated, and more importantly, why did it get so complicated?

Back when I was a kid, the All-Star Game actually did mean something. It meant good TV. It meant something you actually made time for. Nothing was wrong with it until that embarrassment in 2002 when Commissioner Bud Selig just let the game end in a tie since it was past his bedtime. That’s when all hell broke loose.

This used to be a fun pastime. The All-Star game used to be something everyone looked forward to. Now it just seems to be a waste of everyone’s time. Not just the snubs – there’s plenty of those this year – but all the players who actually deserve to be there, the coaches who don’t seem to care, just like the commissioner’s office, and the fans who are losing interest faster than tennis fans when Maria Sharapova is knocked out of a major.

This has to stop. It’s just ruining this time of the year. Now that the All-Star Game is so tedious, it basically ruins streaks and schedules of teams who really are trying to improve their seasons – the Marlins and the Devil Rays, for example.

Here are two teams trying to get to a .500 record, and they have to stop for the All-Star break, which just breaks the teams’ rhythms. The break is good for just one thing: players who actually need a couple of days to get back to their wives, kids or families who need to see them more than just four months out of the year.

If Selig and company want this thing to survive, then some things need to go.

Fan voting: there’s strike one. The All-Star game affecting the World Series: strike two. What’s strike three? A non-All-Star game where the game’s worst players go at each other?

How about this: If the game has to mean something to get these prima donnas to participate with enthusiasm, then let the league winner have home-field advantage in next year’s All-Star Game.

If not, just do away with the whole thing and let me catch up with my sleep.