The All Star game is probably the best of the exhibition all star games in professional sports. Maybe a case could be made for the NHL All Star game, but that game is an anomoly, with no defense. The Pro Bowl in football is a joke. No one really wants to play in it, no one really wants to watch it. The "defense" is vanilla, and the "offense" is boring. The NBA All Star game is another one. No defense, just guys basically running up and down the court throwing it down. It's schoolyard jams.
Baseball All Star games? Even the contrived "meaningful" All Star game we have now is better than every single other professional All Star game. And oh, the memories. At least for me.
It all begins for me in 1974. It's the first All Star game I remember watching. I was 5. There were 22 future Hall of Famers in that game (and one who probably should be, Pete Rose), and three total Mets reprisented. Yogi Berra was a coach. Jerry Grote was one of the catchers, and a star Mets pitcher also made the team. Not Tom Seaver. Jon Matlack. National League won.
The next memorable game was in 1976, another NL win. I remember this one for two reasons: first, Mark Fidrych pitched. He was the sensation of that year. "The Bird", all the crazy antics. Everyone was talking about him, and in those days (I sound like a geezer, but heck, it WAS 34 years ago, for crying out loud) you only had ONE game a week you could watch, the game of the week on NBC. You couldn't see him anywhere but the highlights on the local news or read about him in the newspaper. A real newspaper. One that was delivered to your house. One you physically held in your hands. Secondly, Fred Lynn hit a homer for the only AL run. Although a Mets fan, Fred Lynn was my favorite player (we lived in New Hampshire at the time, so in order to watch baseball, that meant watching Red Sox games, they were the only team you could see.
1979's game was the Dave Parker show. He opened my eyes to real defense in the outfield. What a cannon arm. The guy had three of the most beautiful throws that you could ever see, In the seventh inning, he threw out Jim Rice at third trying to stretch a double into a triple. That was a great throw, but he topped that one in the eighth. Here's the situation:
First and second, one out. AL threatening in a tie gems, 6-6. The dangerous Greg Nettles up. Netles hits a bloop off the end of the bat to right, Brian Downing rounds third trying to score the go-ahead run. Parker comes in, catches the ball on a hop and in one fluid motion hurls an absolute perfect strike, no hop as I remember, to Gary Carter blocking the plate. Downing is dead meat. Most perfect throw to this day that I have ever seen. NL goes on to win in the ninth.
The game in 1983 was a personally memorable one. For a strange reason. For some minor offense, it was 27 years ago, so forgive me for not remembering, my mother had forbidden me to watch the game until 9:00. I had done some petty thing, and so I was banished from the living room. Again, these were quaint times, a fourteen year old kid most definitely did NOT have a television in his own room. Small telephones with updates, live streams, and cameras were unthought of. Computers were something you saw in movies. So, all I could do was hear snips of the game coming into my room from the living room. As anyone who knows me knows that when I am watching a baseball game I am scoring said game on my stat sheets. And anyone who has scored games on stat sheets knows that next to spring training games, All Star games are virtually impossible to do without razor sharp attention due to all the player changes.
So, here I was, clipboard in hand, trying to figure out what was going on. Then, the horrible happened. Fred Lynn (now with the California Angels) came up with the bases loaded and hit was was and still is the ONLY grand slam in Major League Baseball All Star Game HISTORY. My favorite player at the time makes history and I never got to see it live. Fortunately, my father decided on the spot to overrule my mother and allow me to come in and see the replay and the rest of the game, but by then, the damage was done. It's one think I will never forgive my mother for, to this day. (and I'm sure she's reading this right now and not remembering a thing about it! Typical mother)
1984 was Darryl Strawberry's first All Star game, 1986 the Mets sent FOUR starters to the game, Strawberry, Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, and Dwight Gooden. It was a golden age for a Mets fan like myself, by now cable and satellite television were established and we could see hundreds of games a year of our favorite teams, but the All Star game was still special.
Other games had their notable moments, one in particular was the "Bo Jackson Game" in 1989. In the very first inning, Bo made a remarkable, two run saving catch on a drive by Pedro Guerrero. He then hit a MONSTER homer in the bottom of the same inning in his very first All Star ay bat. He remains one of the most impressive total athletes in the history of sports, in my book, anyway. What a shame that injuries cut that wonderous career short in both football and baseball.
Many games have been played over the years, some tense, some blowouts, even a tie game. But the All Star game is still a special one for most real baseball fans. Here's to many more…
