Bud Selig, one of the all-time consensus builders, doesn’t concede important points easily.

Baseball’s grinder of a commissioner took his share of knocks for realignment, interleague play and the expanded playoffs back in the mid-’90s, and he delights in reminding his many converts about all the squawking that change caused at the time.

So it should come as no surprise Selig isn’t about to let the All-Star game sink back into its previous status as a meaningless exhibition.

Oh, it’s still an exhibition all right. If it weren’t, Alex Rodriguez would have done his best Pete Rose imitation Tuesday night and bowled over Russell Martin at home plate instead of tiptoeing meekly into an easy putout.

And if it weren’t an exhibition, MVP frontrunners Barry Bonds and Magglio Ordonez would have received more than two plate appearances apiece instead of heading to the bench in the middle innings.

And do you really think Tony La Russa would ever let a regular-season rally die with the bases loaded in the ninth while holding back Albert Pujols just in case the game reached extra innings?

Still, Selig had to be pleased with the way the 78th All-Star game unfolded and particularly with the late-innings tension it produced.

The American League’s 5-4 win stretched the Nationals’ victory drought to 11 years and kept home-field advantage for the World Series in the AL’s hands.

Just as important from Selig’s perspective were the goosebumps the game managed to produce, starting with the tasteful Willie Mays tribute before the first pitch, carrying on through Ichiro Suzuki’s inside-the-park homer and concluding with Aaron Rowand’s game-ending fly to right.

The whole night was a reminder why baseball’s midseason showcase remains the best of the All-Star events. It also gave Selig further ammunition against critics (like me) who argue it was unnecessary – and, worse, nonsensical – to tie something as important as an extra home game for the World Series to a marketing exercise.

“Compared to the other three All-Star games, we’re over double (in TV ratings),” Selig said Tuesday during his annual address to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. “There’s nobody even close. It’s starting to grow again.”

Helping the cause is a series of close games, a distinct turnaround from the way the All-Star Game had been trending.

Tuesday’s nail-biter marked the third one-run result in the past five All-Star games, coinciding with the start of the World Series linkage in 2003.

Go back before the 2002 tie in Milwaukee, the mess that pushed Selig to take a step he says he’d been considering for several years, and just four of the previous 20 All-Star games had been decided by one run.

Even the 2005 game in Detroit was a two-run spread. Only the 2004 game in Houston, when NL starter Roger Clemens got rocked early, was a clunker (9-4).

“The game has been played with more intensity,” Selig said. “That was the objective.”

Selig recalled a conversation he had with Cubs broadcaster Ron Santo, an eight-time All-Star third baseman who pined for a return to the blood-and-guts days.

“The All-Star game is ridiculous,” Santo told the commissioner. “When I played, that game was big. Now guys are gone in the third or fourth inning.”

Sure, guys still beg off the ponderous Home Run Derby with everything from toothaches to ingrown toenails, but you don’t hear about midgame getaways anymore or even players opting not to attend with phantom injuries.