Is it over yet?
Gosh the American League’s 10-inning win over the National League in the 2018 All-Star Game ended late.
A Cincinnati Red made an error and on the next pitch a Seattle Mariner hit a 3-run homer—and that hardly ended it. The two teams combined for a record 10 home runs. That plus nine walks and 24 strikeouts makes last night’s game a blueprint for what baseball has become in 2018.
Oh, the AL won, 8 points to 6 points, as my awesome Little League moms used to say.
You want a classic big-league All-Star Game? Take us back to when it was for reals, to when the families of Pete Rose and Ray Fosse eat out the night before the game and then the next night Rose runs through Fosse’s shoulder at the plate. Or to when Stan Musial homers in extras to win it for the NL, a moment Musial calls his best moment in baseball. Or to 1971, when I was a boy and the All Star Game was the highlight of the summer.
From 1963-1982, the AL was 1-19 in All Star Games. Consider that. But the one “W” in 1971in Detroit was a biggie, most memorable for Reggie Jackson’s homer into one of the Tiger Stadium light standards beyond right field off Doc Ellis in the AL’s 6-4 win that had more in common with the 2018 game than you might expect.
In the 1971 game, there were six home runs, which tied the All Star Game record. All the scoring came off homers, and all the runs were scored by future Hall of Famers. Twenty-six future Hall of Famers were in uniform.
Check out some names in the NL lineup: Johnny Bench, Willie McCovey, Joe Torre, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Willie Stargell, Steve Carlton, Fergie Jenkins, Tom Seaver, Manny Sanguillen, Rose, Lou Brock, Bobby Bonds, Ron Santo. Managed by Sparky Anderson.
And the AL: Boog Powell, Rod Carew, Brooks Robinson, Luis Aparicio, Tony Oliva, Frank Robinson, Carl Yastrzemski, Vida Blue, Mike Cuellar, Mickey Lolich, Sad Sam McDowell, Andy Messersmith, Jim Palmer, Wilbur Wood, Norm Cash, Harmon Killebrew, Frank Howard, Jackson, Al Kaline, and Bobby Murcer. Managed by my guy Earl Weaver.
Goodness. Wish it were coming on again tonight and I was watching it for the first time.
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