Baseball doesn’t just have the best All-Star Game. It has what feels like the only All-Star Game.
They keep changing the format for the NBA All-Star Game as a way of trying to make it at least look competitive. The NHL once tried Team World vs. Team North America and then went with four-team, 3-on-3, single elimination format. The Pro Bowl in the NFL for years used to be just a trip to Hawaii for the players chosen, and over time turned into a glorified Flag Football Game.
The All-Star Game in baseball isn’t perfect, not by any means: There was the night back in 2002 they ran out of pitchers and the game ended in a tie. They briefly tried making the winner of the game determine which league would get home-field advantage in the World Series.
Now it’s back to being just a ballgame, one involving most of the best baseball players we have, so many of them young. That will be part of the beauty of the occasion. A celebration this old featuring all that young talent.
And the game will be played the night after the Home Run Derby, which will simply be the bomb at Coors Field on Monday night, largely because of the presence of Shohei Ohtani, the biggest star we have in sports right now, and that means any sport. And then he will not just hit in the game on Tuesday, he is also expected to pitch, something that has never happened in the 90 All-Star Games that have come before.
Joe Maddon, Ohtani’s manager, had a conversation with American League manager Kevin Cash to let him know that he is all-in on his star doing both.
"The conclusion is that he will pitch, but how it's going to happen has not been concluded," Maddon said. "There's different ways to do it, obviously. He could start the game or come in game-in-progress."
Shohei will be there Tuesday and so will Vlad Jr. and Tatis Jr. And we’ll watch them to see which one of them might give us a moment, and turn the All-Star Game itself into a Home Run Derby, for at least one swing of the bat that might be remembered.
You don’t have to go deep into baseball’s past to find the kind of framed moments that once defined what is sweetly still called the Midsummer Classic, in deference to the past, moments that sometimes occurred before the first pitch of the All-Star Game was thrown. No one will ever forget the scene at Fenway Park in 1999, one of the most memorable in all of baseball history. Members of the All-Century team and the ’99 All-Stars, all on the same field, the greatest collection of baseball names and baseball stars ever assembled on one field, crowded around Ted Williams in his golf cart, the last time the man known as Teddy Ballgame would ever be on that field. It was his last fine baseball moment.
The night before, you know who won the Derby at Fenway Park? Junior Griffey, that’s who, just as Williams had predicted that he would.
Just eight years ago, there was the sight of the late Tom Seaver throwing out the first pitch at Citi Field when the All-Star Game came back to New York City, before Matt Harvey, whom we once thought would be the new Seaver, threw the first pitch for real that night.
And who will ever forget the night that Alex Rodriguez told Cal Ripken, over there at third base, to come play shortstop in Cal’s last All-Star Game, as Joe Torre waved Cal over there from the dugout? That was 2001, in the first inning.
Mariano Rivera waved goodbye at that All-Star Game in Citi Field. And Pedro Martinez struck out five of the six batters he faced in the ’99 game at Fenway, three of them future Hall of Famers. Shane Bieber struck out the side at Progressive Field in 2019 and ended up being the MVP of the night. Derek Jeter, in his first All-Star Game start, and with his usual flair for the dramatic, doubled off Randy Johnson his first time up and knocked in two runs and scored another.
Maybe Trevor Story, the hometown guy, will give us a moment on Tuesday night at Coors Field. Or Nolan Arenado, the Rockies star for so long, will have a moment of his own. Or Ohtani will give everybody what they want, and try to hit one to Steamboat Springs.
“One thing never changes,” Reggie Jackson told me once, when we were talking about that ball he hit off the light tower in old Tiger Stadium, in the All-Star Game played 50 years ago this week. “You don’t want to do something great in front of the country. You want to do it in front of the other guys on that field. You want to be great in front of them.”
Everybody on the field will get their chance this week. All of them looking for a moment. A lot has changed in the All-Star Game. Not that.