2015 MLB All-Star Game Upstaged by Pregame Ceremonies, HR Derby

CINCINNATI — It’s tough duty, this business of producing memories.

By its very nature, you expect an All-Star Game to come fully loaded with thrills and chills, packed with punch and zest. But Reggie Jackson doesn’t smash one into the light tower and Derek Jeter doesn’t say farewell every year.

Ever since Ted Williams’ appearance before the 1999 game in Boston produced a love-in that delayed the game when players simply refused to leave the field, so enamored were they with a fading Splendid Splinter, baseball has been faced with a difficult dilemma.

The pressure—self-imposed and otherwise—is immense to put on a spectacular show. But when the game doesn’t follow script, like the American League’s 6-3 win over the National League on a muggy night on the banks of the Ohio River, it’s like watching a deep fly ball caught for a routine out at the fence.

Let’s be honest: The 86th All-Star Game was…OK. Just OK.

Hank Aaron and Willie Mays on the field beforehand? Now, that was a moment.

Pete Rose being allowed out of his cage and onto a real, live, big league field—and being rewarded with a standing ovation? Touching, but it's not nearly the spine-tingling experience many expected.

Maybe everyone was hung over from a thrilling Home Run Derby the night before that truly lived up to its new and improved rules. Players were still buzzing about it before Tuesday night’s game. Or perhaps modern All-Star accoutrements such as the Red Carpet parade dull their senses by the time the game begins.

Or, maybe it’s just baseball.

The takeaways on this night were Mike Trout becoming the first back-to-back MVP winner in All-Star Game history, Jacob deGrom setting a record by whiffing three hitters on a stunningly economical 10 pitches and hometown hero Aroldis Chapman practically setting the radar gun ablaze by hitting 103 mph while fanning the side.

John Minchillo/Associated Press

“That was fun,” Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira said after his five-pitch Chapman experience, whiffing on a 103 mph comet. Of the five pitches he saw, four were 100 or higher.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever faced 102 before,” Teixeira said. “I did my best. I fouled off a couple of pitches.

“It was a fun at-bat because we were winning. If we were losing, it wouldn’t have been so fun.”

With the crowd oohing and aahing, Teixeira took several peeks at the pitch-speed display on the scoreboard.

“Absolutely,” he exclaimed, as animated as an excited Little Leaguer. “After every pitch!”

Three innings earlier, in the sixth, deGrom fanned Stephen Vogt and Jason Kipnis on 97 mph fastballs and then poor Jose Iglesias on a vertigo-inducing 81 mph curveball.

No pitcher in All-Star history had ever struck out the side on as few as 10 pitches. Houston’s Brad Lidge came the closest, fanning the side on 11 pitches in the seventh inning in the 2005 All-Star Game in Detroit’s Comerica Park.

Jeff Roberson/Associated Press

“Not much of an at-bat,” Vogt said of his three-pitch special.

“Heater, heater, heater, heater,” Kipnis said. “Good morning, good afternoon, ball outside, good night.”

Like the Home Run Derby the night before, this was all about power, power and more power.

“He struck out the side on 10 pitches. I did have a four-pitch at-bat, please note that,” Kipnis deadpanned. “You have to give a tip of the cap to the tough at-bat I put up.”

“He’s obviously a much better hitter than me,” Vogt quipped, loud enough for Kipnis, whose locker was right next door, to hear.

Given what they were seeing from deGrom, though, and given that it was Vogt’s first All-Star at-bat, the Oakland catcher had one goal in mind as he battled.

“I wasn’t going to go down looking,” Vogt declared. “He painted me twice, and then he blew me away.”

John Minchillo/Associated Press

Oddly, even in earning a historical second consecutive MVP award, Trout’s night wasn’t about power. His game-opening home run on Zack Greinke’s fourth pitch of the night, a 94 mph fastball, was a fence-scraper that barely made it over the right-field wall. He scored two more runs, reaching base the first time on a hustle play to beat out a would-be double-play grounder and reaching base the next time on a leadoff walk.

This was a night of moments, small moments, adding up to a good but far from great All-Star Game.

Part of it is because the players mostly still don’t buy into the idea of World Series home-field advantage being attached to the game’s winner, many rushing off toward charter flights that will bring them home as soon as they exit the game. Some are ambivalent toward the idea of this game affecting the World Series. Others are hostile toward it.

Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw surrendered two runs on three hits as the AL snapped a 1-1 tie in the fifth. And no, despite pitching for a team with aspirations of playing in its first World Series since 1988, he said he was not necessarily working with that idea in mind.

“Not really,” Kershaw said. “That’s not something I think about.”

Sort of—but not quite—like Justin Verlander, after getting torched in the first inning in Kansas City in 2012, saying he wasn’t pitching so much as trying to light up the radar gun because he knows that fans want to see a show.

Or like Adam Wainwright exiting last year’s game and immediately telling a national-television audience that he "grooved" a pitch to Jeter as a sort of parting gift to the Yankees icon.

Sometimes, this game produces a night for the ages.

But baseball can’t have it that way every year.

Rick Osentoski-USA TODAY Sports

Not that Cincinnati fans weren’t ready or didn’t deserve a classic. The buzz around town over these past three days was electric, and the standing ovation the fans delivered when Home Run Derby champion Todd Frazier was introduced was ear-splitting. Chapman got the same treatment, and NL coach Bryan Price, Cincinnati’s embattled manager, got a nice hand too.

None of the moments, not even Rose, matched the appearance of Aaron and Mays. Named as part of baseball’s “Franchise Four” campaign as two of the “greatest living players,” Aaron and Mays were honored along with Sandy Koufax and Johnny Bench before the game.

It was poignant partly because Aaron, 81, moved slowly with a cane, and Mays, 84, shuffled along ever so gingerly with a body man assisting him. So many pictures over the years keep the players young in our minds. Then one day they show up in high-def, and age has nibbled away significantly around the edges. We shouldn’t be surprised, but we always are.

“It was awesome,” Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford said. “It was a pretty special moment. To get those four guys, the best living players, out there on the field together. It shows how big a deal they are.

“And we get to see Willie in our clubhouse nearly every home game. Probably the best living player on the planet.”

Rose joined Bench, Joe Morgan and Barry Larkin on the field before that as part of the Reds’ Franchise Four unveiling. Though Rose received a standing ovation, the moment seemed smaller than expected. Maybe it was the months and months of expectations leading up to it. Rose ambled out, himself an old man at 74, and waved to the crowd before disappearing again.

It was more hometown moment than national moment. The night before, after dining at Cincinnati’s famed Montgomery Inn ribs joint not far from the ballpark on Pete Rose Way, Rose received a standing ovation as he left. And, as one of the waiters said after praising him effusively, “You wouldn’t have Cincinnati if there was no Pete Rose.”

Makes perfect sense, in its own historical and twisted way.

As Frazier told Bleacher Report before the big moment, “People don’t understand how crazy Pete Rose fans are here. They love Pete Rose. They adore him here.

“If you ever want to get into a fight with someone from Cincinnati, tell them that you don’t like Pete Rose.”

No thanks, not on this night. All in on this All-Star Game for months, Cincinnati deserved its Rose. This was a star-spangled night on which the past met the present, something baseball continues to do so well.

It’s just always a bummer when the game doesn’t match the lead-in.

Scott Miller covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.

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