(Jotted as the Midsummer game became oddly classic):
-It’s sort of fun, but always kind of stomach-churning, to see the aging Hall of Famers get trotted out there. These can roughly be divided into those who live in Florida now, and those who don’t.
-I don’t understand how “the greatest collection of baseball’s all-stars ever assembled on one field” amounts to a “first for Yankee Stadium,” as the pregame script claimed. What is the metric for all-star field-assemblage? Later, fans are asked to vote on the “Bank of America greatest moment in Yankee Stadium history,” which sounds like it’s slightly different from the regular greatest moment.
-For once, they weren’t saying “Yooouk,” they were saying “boooo.” But you had to figure it was frustrating for them to try to articulate that. (McCarver and Buck spoke to this issue.) Maybe there should be a backup heckle-word for when the guy’s name contains an “oo” sound. Like “naaaaaaa,” maybe, or “iiiiiiiicky.”
-A B-2 bomber used for the pregame flyover, instead of the trademark fighter jets? Seemed very shady and Cold War-ish. Isn’t the point of those that you can’t detect them?
-Does A-Rod always wear white shoes with the home uniform? I feel like he doesn’t (see left). Anyway, I like them. Very Oakland A. Very post-Memorial Day. Jeter, by contrast, was already shod in after-Labor Day black. That guy just lives and breathes fall baseball.
-Loved Ken Rosenthal’s Cliff Lee anecdote conflating baseball with (multiple forms of) hunting: apparently Lee supplemented his off-season workouts by doing pull-ups while off shootin’ deer (strung up his own bar between trees), and doing crunches while out shootin’ ducks. What a clever way to kill time between shotgun blasts.
-Strange entertainment when Yogi joined Joe and Tim in the booth in the top of the 3rd. I always expect him to speak entirely in Yogi-isms, and am kind of confused when he communicates normally. Also, loopy interjections from McCarver: “Have you ever not had any fun??” And, “you’re a treasure, my friend!”
-Ichiro’s throwing out of Pujols in the bottom of the fourth struck me as uniquely sharp defense, as All-Star Games go (NB: this before the game became about defense). He read an away-field corner perfectly, which no-one does; he even seemed to let the momentum of the ball flow into his throwing motion; and then instead of gunning it in high, he delivered a low one-hop that laid the ball in for the tag. Worth noting, however, that Pujols was clearly safe on the replay. (Ugly strikeout for Ichi in the 5th, though; that whole running-before-you-hit-it thing looks pretty terrible when you don’t hit it at all.)
-I’m not entirely comfortable with McCarver referring to the changeup as “the pitch of the islands,” re Edinson Volquez. I mean, I guess if he’s citing the Wall Street Journal. I guess. It’s really about the phrasing.
-Impressive stuff from Ryan Dempster, striking out the side in the 9th. Recall his chaotic turn as the Cubs closer last year—and that against the NL Central. It seemed fairly obvious, to this viewer anyway, that he’d be the goat. But the man defied his narrative.
-As McCarver implied, you can easily surmise that the key double play in the top of the 10th—Kinsler to Young to Morneau—wouldn’t have been turned if the 2B and SS didn’t play on the same team. Young caught a side flip in stride and barely got Uggla at first, preventing the go-ahead run from scoring. No same team = lead in 10th for NL.
-The bottom of the 10th was about as entertaining a little stretch of ASG baseball as I can recall. Pitching and hitting nerves come up all the time in the ASG, but true defensive nerves, as displayed by Dan Uggla, he of the 2 straight errors on the heels of his offensive double-play, seem rarer. His throw to the plate for out #1 was seriously tight and overthought (ditto, later, his prevent-defense on Sizemore’s grounder in the 12th). An engaging drama that worked out, briefly, for the NL.
-That McLouth-to-Martin gamesaver in the 11th really did appear to be as excellent as it… appeared. There was so much drop on McLouth’s ball; for Martin to remain still while it fell in (instead of reaching for it), then field it cleanly, was pretty coolheaded. The 12th-inning pick on Guzman’s throw (a foul, it turned out) was probably even better. Guy’s good.
-Tragically, my DVR cut out in the bottom of the 13th, at approximately the time the All-Star Game became an interesting thing to be watching—this despite my projecting into the four sitcoms scheduled in the postgame period (a Cheers, two Friendses, and a Seinfeld). It’s been happening a lot lately, and at the cruelest times; the Wimbledon epic cut off about four games from the end. Seemed like a 6-hour recording would have it covered, but alas… Anyway, the incident rules out notes from the final innings of the eventual 15er. But by way of summation: a game about defense, a game about making or not making plays, and therefore, precisely because that’s what we don’t expect from it, an ASG that was weirdly good.
