It's not about winning

The All-Star Game is about performances, not scores

MILWAUKEE -- Major League Baseball's All-Star Game is still the best all-star game in sports -- yeah, even after Tuesday's weirdly overblown and underwhelming ending -- because baseball, in a lot of ways, is a solitary sport.

You don't need your teammates to reach a yard over the center-field wall and steal a home run from somebody. If you're going to do that, you do that all by yourself.

You don't need your teammates to hit a homer. You don't need your teammates to dive, flat-out, perfectly horizontal to the ground, and swipe a hit from the fastest player on the other team.

OK, maybe you need your first baseman for that one. But that's it.

Granted, you need your teammates to win. Can't do that by yourself. No way. Never could.

But this is the All-Star Game, for crying out loud. It's not really a game. It's a show. Nobody cares about winning.

Well, nobody should, anyway.

Baseball's best put on another All-Star show Tuesday at Miller Park and, up until a few fans got a tad heated about that aborted ending, it was pretty much what it was supposed to be.

It was Arizona's Curt Schilling in the first two innings reaching back and dealing a fistful of 98 mph fastballs.

It was Toronto pitcher Roy Halladay challenging San Francisco's Barry Bonds on a 3-0 count -- at the All-Star show, nobody pitches around anyone, anytime -- and Bonds smashing a BB 385 feet off the concrete façade of the second deck.

Tuesday's show was Jimmy Rollins, the Philadelphia shortstop, smacking a couple of singles and motoring around the bases to score two runs for the National League.

It was Schilling, in the bottom of the first, giving Texas shortstop Alex Rodriguez nothing but fastballs -- just as the big right-hander promised Rodriguez he would -- and A-Rod going down swinging.

"It was just fun," Schilling said. "It was one of the few times I remember as a Big Leaguer where you can actually enjoy the moment and feel and have fun."

If you skip the linescore and all the pitching changes -- and Tuesday's laughably "controversial" ending -- the show hardly ever disappoints. Tuesday's so-called game was exactly five outs old before Minnesota's Torii Hunter, an All-Star for the first time, made it worth the playing.

With American League starter Derek Lowe on the mound, Bonds smacked a drive to deep right-center field. Both Hunter, in center, and Seattle's Ichiro Suzuki, playing right field, converged on the ball. Hunter got there first, leaped, stretched elbow-high over the wall and came down, all smiles, with the ball.

"When I got in [the clubhouse] and looked at the tape and saw my reaction, it was like 'Oh my God.' Did I do that?" Hunter said.

It was one of the better catches anyone could ever hope to see. Anywhere. In any situation.

"I thought he was Michael Jordan, " said the Cubs' Sammy Sosa.

This All-Star show is tailored for guys like Hunter, a friendly small-market star unknown in much of the country. It's a chance for him to show he belongs. It's a chance to be center stage at the big show.

"I had butterflies before the game," he admitted. "But when I made that catch, they all went away."

Hunter, a player known, at least in the upper Midwest, primarily for his defense, ranks Tuesday's catch as the best of his career. It was in the All-Star Game, after all, against Bonds.

"I can always tell my grandkids," he said, "I robbed a Hall of Famer."

There were other plays, too, on Tuesday. In the bottom of the second, Montreal second baseman Jose Vidro -- another friendly small-market guy -- ranged far to his left, went into an all-out dive, grabbed a sizzling ground ball off Ichiro's bat and scrambled up to get him at first.

There was the 414-foot homer by the New York Yankees' Alfonso Soriano and a pair of doubles each from Paul Konerko of the White Sox and Damian Miller of the Diamondbacks.

There was Sosa trying to take third and getting gunned down by Boston's Manny Ramirez from left field.

Tuesday night's show was about this: The best in baseball giving their best. It wasn't about winning.

Damn good thing, too.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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