#344---All-Star Game, 7/9/2002

 

This was the infamous All-Star tie that incited a ridiculous overreaction of “This Time it Counts” and a brief three-year period where the game was managed differently. Of course I’m obligated to point out Barry Bonds’ two-run homer in the third, after being robbed on the warning track by Torii Hunter in the first. The AL trailed 5-2 entering the seventh, but scored four to take the lead before the NL took it back in the bottom of the frame. Omar Vizquel’s eighth inning triple tied it up at seven, and from that point forward there was no further scoring, and after eleven innings it was decided that Freddy Garcia and Vicente Padilla not be hung out to dry. Bud Selig had quite a coup on his hands at his Milwaukee All-Star game.

#343---All-Star Game, 7/10/2001

 

The AL won this midsummer classic on the strength of three solo homers: back-to-back shots from Derek Jeter and Magglio Ordonez off Jon Lieber in the sixth, but most infamously Cal Ripken’s third inning homer off Chan Ho Park. Ripken celebration was the theme of the day, and my notes suggest that I wasn’t having it – the note at the very top bemoans the delay “before first pitch for Gwynn/Ripken waste of time”. Tony Gwynn did not play in this game, while Ripken was also feted by A-Rod moving him to shortstop for the first inning before they switched back to their appointed positions in the second.

Rookie Albert Pujols made his All-Star debut, entering at third base in the bottom of the fifth, drawing a walk in his only PA, and playing second base in the eighth inning. During the regular season, Pujols’ career at second base consisted of 3 1/3 innings in one 2008 game.

#342---All-Star Game, 7/11/2000

 

If you paid careful attention to last week’s scoresheet, you may note that 2000 marked the second time in three years that David Wells started the All-Star Game for the AL. In 1998, he was relieved by Roger Clemens, Brad Radke, and Bartolo Colon plus relievers; this time, he starting nod may be easier to grasp as he was relieved by James Baldwin, Aaron Sele, and Tim Hudson. Despite this unimpressive pitching staff, the AL bested the NL 6-3 in Atlanta when there wasn’t a bizarre civic religion that prevented such a thing. Derek Jeter was the star, going 3-3 and driving in the go-ahead runs (which stood up) off Al Leiter in the fourth.

#341---All-Star Game, 7/7/1998

 

I will be starting a series of sorts as I post all of the All-Star Game scoresheets I have, starting with the first I scored in 1998. I will not be revisiting 1999 (#103) or 2008 (#29), I missed 2003, and we all missed 2020. Otherwise I think I have an intact set. There are a couple good things about All-Star scoresheets. One is that keeping them proves that you are scorekeeping fanatic (although I suppose that having a vanity blog that posts scoresheets kept over almost thirty years already should suffice on that front). A second is that they are great snapshots of an era and a moment in time in the game, something that becomes more apparent with times than instead of being the names you think about every day as a baseball fan, names like Clemens and Maddux and Griffey and Piazza and Sheffield and McGwire leap off the page, and names like Erstad and Durham and O’Neill and Grieve and Kendall and Urbina now strike as more interesting in many ways than they were in the past, as some of them have become college coaches and others are reduced to an aging Mike Hargrove remembering only as the “little black guy from the White Sox” in a radio interview (Durham) and others have been jailed in tinpot dictatorships.

A few notables from this game, which in true ‘90s fashion was slugfest taken 13-8 by the junior circuit at that most ‘90s of ballparks, Coors Field:

* Roberto Alomar was the MVP, collecting a bunt hit in his first at bat, a homer later, another single, reaching on an error, and stealing two bases.

* Barry Bonds walked, flied out, then blasted a three-run homer off Bartolo Colon.

* Alex Rodriguez was voted in as the starter over Derek Jeter in this more enlightened time, homering in the fifth before Jeter replaced him.

* The AL stole six bases, the NL none. The AL

* Sammy Sosa did not appear in the game; I had to look up that he missed the game with a sore shoulder, at first wondering whether he had been left off the All-Star team as he chased Mark McGwire and Roger Maris.

* Jeff Shaw made his first appearance in a Dodger uniform in this game, as he had just been acquired from Cincinnati.