Been a busy couple days, but I wanted to re-visit the ratings for the All-Star Game.

Technically, Fox can boast about a 1 percent increase over 2012 with 11 million viewers tuning in. The final rating was at 6.9, up from 6.8, an all-time low for the Mid-Summer Classic.

Yet that’s a disappointing number. The rating should have been higher, given that the game was in the nation’s No. 1 market (hey, there’s Seinfeld) and the Mariano Rivera factor. The New York rating was up 16 percent from last year, and the game peaked at 7.6 when Rivera came on to pitch in the eighth inning.

Take out those two elements, and this year’s edition likely is the least viewed All-Star game of all time.

Even more distressing for Fox and MLB was who didn’t watch the game: Young viewers. According to the TVSportsRatings feed on Twitter, men 50 and over accounted for 34 percent of the audience, the highest ever. In 1993, it was 24 percent.

TVSportsRatings tweets:

Between ’93 and ’13, ASG has lost 51% of its average audience and 63% of its Male 18-49 rating.

Jason McIntyre of Big Lead added more:

NBA AS on TNT had a 5.7 Men 18-49 and 6.37 M18-34. MLB had 4.5 and 3.5. NBA had 8 mil viewers. MLB 11 mil.

As I have been saying for a long time, baseball isn’t growing new fans. I have first-hand evidence in my own home with two sports-crazed teenage sons. They watch only a little baseball on TV and that’s more than their friends, who barely watch at all. It’s all about football, basketball, and even hockey for them with the Blackhawks in the Chicago market.

Clearly, baseball has issues. I will examine it more later on, but I want to leave you with this tweet from Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports on Neil Diamond:

Baseball wants to get a younger fan base. Naturally, it brings out a 72-year-old to sing in the middle of one of its highest-profile games.

Yes, enough with Neil Diamond at baseball games.