With due reverence to the late singer/song writer Jim Croce: You don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit in the wind, you don’t pull the mask of that ole Lone Ranger and you don’t call the All-Star Game real.

Tuesday, MLB will again stage the mid-summer classic. After the incredulous debacle in 2002 when the game ended in a tie because the teams ran out of pitchers, MLB has tried to give meaning to the game.

That resulted in home-field advantage in the World Series being given to the winning league each year. That has not changed the nature of the All- Star Game.

It is still an exhibition game, managed and played that way. Manny Ramirez will not be there because Boston wants to rest his bad knee. Mets’ catcher Paul Lo Duca won’t go so he can rest a thumb.

Dontrelle Willis, the Marlins’ ace, will pitch the first game after the break. He will pitch little in Pittsburgh. Pitchers Bronson Arroyo of the Reds, Jason Schmidt of the Giants, Tom Glavine of the Mets, and Chris Carpenter of the Cards are All-Stars scheduled to pitch this Sunday.

Other managers will call the All-Star skippers and put in “requests” as to who shouldn’t play or who should appear only briefly.

The players’ first obligation is to their respective teams and MLB recognizes that. There is nothing necessarily wrong with all this.

The All-Star game once had real meaning. There were two league offices, each with a president. Players did not jump from league to league as often as they do now and there was no interleague play.

Therefore, the All-Star game was the one chance besides the World Series for the two leagues to compete and there was a genuine rivalry.

None of that exists any more. Players view themselves as being in the majors – which league is of little import. Both leagues now are run by the commissioner, the league presidents with their separate offices are gone.

The All-Star game is a celebration of baseball, where those players having great first halves of the year mingle with those selected based on their long-term contributions and successes in the game.

The game can be great fun. The players are loose and playful. They want to do well and there’s a ton of ribbing among the stars that fans get to watch and enjoy.

Always there is the extraordinary talent level that invariably results in some monster homers, sensational fielding plays and a couple of pitchers who mow down hitters for an inning.

There is always great pageantry and ceremony, lots of stars and starlets, and plenty of former baseball greats to be seen.

What there will not be is a game played as though it counts for anything. Managers will try to get everyone who wants to play into the game. The starters will be in street clothes before the final out.

To base home-field advantage for the World Series on the game’s outcome is unfair. That should be connected to regular season success.

No one has an answer of how to make the game “meaningful.” Maybe we don’t need one. It already is.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.