An Unlikely Hero Emerges to End an All-Star Losing Streak
If he may have scaled Mount Rainier to unfold the message from on excessive, Rob Manfred absolutely would have. Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, had cause to have a good time his sport on Tuesday: attendance is up eight % over final season, with a brisker tempo of play, extra daring on the bases, enhancing tv scores and shock contenders.
“What do they call it — a virtuous cycle, right?” Manfred mentioned Tuesday afternoon, earlier than the 93rd version of the All-Star Game. “The rule changes are good, the players stay positive, it makes the fans even more positive about them because the players are positive about them. So it’s really been great for us.”
On one level, although, Manfred acknowledged that baseball had merely caught a break. The World Baseball Classic in March ended with a dream confrontation: the very best participant on this planet, Shohei Ohtani, placing out his Los Angeles Angels teammate, the adorned Mike Trout, to win the match for Japan.
“Every once in a while, you get lucky,” Manfred conceded. “The culmination of Ohtani and Trout, you can’t plan that.”
Just a few hours later — with the right-field higher deck nonetheless bathed within the wonderful sunshine of Seattle in the summertime — baseball almost received fortunate once more. A two-out stroll within the backside of the ninth inning introduced Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners’ younger centerpiece, to the plate with an opportunity to win the sport.
Like everybody from Snohomish to Spokane, Rodríguez was considering of a house run.
“Oh, definitely I was trying to win it, honestly,” he mentioned. “Once I saw the guy getting to first, my thought was just get a good pitch to drive and let’s try to win this game.”
Alas, that pitch by no means got here. As keen as he was to play hometown hero, Rodríguez took a stroll. It arrange an anticlimactic end: Craig Kimbrel of the Philadelphia Phillies struck out Cleveland’s José Ramírez, sealing the National League’s 3-2 victory over the American League.
It was the primary N.L. win since 2012, however there was no postgame toast by the league president. That place was eradicated years in the past, and league distinctions are all however extinct now, with all groups enjoying one another within the common season.
“I don’t think they really pay too much attention to that anymore,” mentioned the N.L. supervisor, Rob Thomson of the Phillies, referring to the top of the N.L.’s shedding streak. “I think if you’re playing in a game, you want to win, but I don’t think there was much significance to that at all.”
The All-Star Game is generally an opportunity to have a good time the game and gawk on the feats of the majors’ greatest showmen. Indeed, the primary two batters of the sport, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman, smashed deep drives that become dashing, midair catches by outfielders from Cuba. Adolis García fought off the solar to rob Acuña in proper, and Randy Arozarena — his former teammate within the St. Louis Cardinals’ farm system — soared to snag Freeman’s ball within the left discipline shadows.
“It’s my first time here at the All-Star Game, and I’m glad I shared the field with Adolis, who is my daughter’s godfather and my brother,” Arozarena, of the Tampa Bay Rays, mentioned by a translator. “So it was fun.”
Arozarena — the runner-up to Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in Monday’s dwelling run derby — did his signature crossed-arms pose on the warning observe after his catch. García, of the Texas Rangers, made one other leaping seize on the warning observe within the fourth.
“I have all the faith in the world in Adolis that he’s going to make those plays,” mentioned Rangers’ Jonah Heim, the beginning A.L. catcher. “Usually when he jumps, he catches it.”
In the second inning, when Nathan Eovaldi pitched for the A.L., Heim was certainly one of six Rangers on the sphere on the similar time. The solely different groups to try this have been the champion Yankees of 1939 and the star-crossed Brooklyn Dodgers of 1951.
“It’s truly special,” Heim mentioned. “When you look around and you’ve got third, short, second, right and pitcher and catcher on the field at the All-Star Game, you can’t really beat that.”
The Atlanta Braves tried; their complete infield performed collectively within the backside of the fifth inning. That may have been a stirring visible, however for the third 12 months in a row, M.L.B. put the groups in generic Nike uniforms, making its greatest gamers look as indistinguishable as doable.
It was becoming, then, that Tuesday’s Most Valuable Player was maybe probably the most nameless All-Star of all: the Colorado Rockies’ catcher, Elias Díaz, who pulled a two-run, go-ahead homer to left off the Baltimore Orioles’ Félix Bautista within the eighth.
Díaz, 32, signed with Colorado in 2020 after 5 undistinguished seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was the one consultant for the last-place Rockies, however earned his solution to the roster by hitting .277 with 9 dwelling runs and an upbeat outlook.
“It’s incredible,” Díaz mentioned by a translator, when requested about his transformation from Pirates castoff to All-Star M.V.P. “When they let me go, I didn’t allow myself to feel defeated. I maintained my confidence and stayed positive. Now I’m just happy to be here.”
He did greater than present up, leaving with a crystal bat named for Ted Williams, a prize that eluded all of the headliners — together with Ohtani, who struck out and walked in his two plate appearances.
Yes, Ohtani mentioned, he did hear the gang chanting “Come to Seattle” as he batted, a recruiting plea from the 47,159 paying followers who would love Ohtani to relocate as a free agent this low season.
“Never experienced anything like that,” Ohtani mentioned by a translator, including later, “Every time I come here the fans are passionate, they’re really into the game. So it’s very impressive.”
Ohtani has spent off-seasons in Seattle and mentioned town was stunning. He wouldn’t say whether or not fellow All-Stars had made subtler pitches for him to be their teammate.
“I would like to keep that a secret,” he mentioned.
