If you didn't stay up until 2am Eastern (or if you're my brother in England-if you didn't go to work late) then you didn't find out what happened in the final All-Star game at Yankee Stadium. I was up that late, but came to a conclusion at the bottom of the 13th: all of the familiar faces of the game's greats were all being shown...on the bench? After watching Dan Uggla punt his third ground ball of extra innings (ever take infield practice, buddy?), after seeing Carlos Quinton bat for the third time (who is he, anyway?), after watching some Oriole pitcher named Sherrill (with an ERA over 4.00) mow through the NL "All-Stars" like it was little league, and after watching Dioner Navaro get thrown out at home by Nate McLouth, Carlos Quinton (who's that guy, AGAIN?) by Christian Guzman, and Michael Young by Dan Uggla (amazing he fielded it cleanly enough to get a throw home) I realized that the All-Star part of the game ended about the 7th inning when all of the starters were gone and all of the token we-have-to-take-someone-from-every-team players hit the field. OK, we'll give it until the 9th since Rivera came in to pitch. And really the "All-Star" part of it wasn't much a game either, just a couple of millionnaires swinging the bat a couple times for the New Yorkers who were rich enough to afford a ticket AND gas to get to the game. I turned the TV off after the 13th and lamented the fact that I had just wasted several hours of my life on Joakim Soria, Aaron Cook, J.D. Drew, Ian Kinsler, and Russell Martin.
If you went to bed without a knowledge of how this game ended, I salute your ignorance! If only I had been intelligent enough to take part in that same ignorance, it would have been bliss this morning with that 4:30am wake-up call.
I did stay up, and it was one of the best games I've seen. Every inning I thought to myself, this is going to be the end. Example 1: AL had bases loaded on Uggly's errors,and no outs; what happened, Aaron Cook (deservedly an all-star) retired the side with some incredible pitching and solid defense behind him. Example 2: NL had the bases loaded with 1 out; what happened, strike out and pop-up to end the inning. Given that the "BIG NAMES" were out by this point, but I think it made the game that much more interesting. The only problem was the good guys (NL) didn't win.
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