All Star Game
There were some moments in the Bomb Derby last night that were captivating but that event misses the mark in a lot of ways. Adley Rutschman, the great young catcher from Baltimore, turned around and starting hitting right handed and banged out 6 of the 8 pitches he saw–and that’s after hitting 20 or so left handed. But then he was instantly eliminated by Robert. Though I didn’t bet him I really wanted to see him hit again.
The other problem is that you really don’t see any of the bombs leave the park. The hitter doesn’t even see them he’s too busy loading up for the next pitch.
I made money on it and that was fun but as Zumiee said on the last thread, if you aren’t gambling on it then it’s probably not going to keep your interest.
Who’s watching the game tonight? I personally think this game started to get ruined when they stopped having the players wear their home jersey’s.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Won’t watch minute of All-Star bore. Same holds true for All-Star snoozes in football, basketball and hockey.
I generally lost interest in the late 1990s after moving to DC getting married having kids. Was a thrill as a kid to see players you never would typically see unless they were playing in October or Monday night baseball!!! So when baseball became more ubiquitous on ESPN and elsewhere it took that uniqueness out of the game.
Also I think as kids it was the one moment we would get to see one of our guys in a Giants uni getting some attention while we typically had years of mediocre baseball to root for. Once Bonds came and began regularly winning and making the playoffs, I think that also lessened the excitement of the all-star game because our team was delivering excitement all season long most years, especially going 3X5!!!
Olden days, the game was good to get glimpses of AL players. Now, they’re playing the Giants all the time. Also, a few traumatic AS games–Atlee’s, Reuschel’s–sort of soured me on the spectacle. Oth, Verlander and Pablo in 2012: presage of things to come. So I may check out an inning or two, especially late when Camilo may get his shot.
Are they enforcing the clock?
Also fwiw baseball AS game is superior to other sports becz you will see some D.
Tommy Troy out of Stanford drafted #12 in first round, out of Los Gatos HS. Worked downtown there for many years before I retired as Pandemic hit; major sports teams very successful in public school leagues, girls too. Knew LGS field hockey coach who used to beat private schools in playoffs.
Another local drafted from Cards was OF Eddie Park in 8th round by ChiSox from Valley Christian HS San Jose.
I’m with GH, above. The AS game lost its luster for me maybe for some different reasons, too.
The AS game long ago to me became some kind of unwatchable turnstile substitution affair, apparently designed for managers to insert as many players into a game appearance, however short, as possible. Some of the players chosen for it don’t even bother to show up, why should we ? Some apparently don’t even bother to feign injury to duck it. Doval is an all-star. Alex Cobb, really? As good a stat mix as some of the rest, I guess, so good for him after a dozen years as an OK starter I never really heard of until he became a Giant. He gets a contract bonus. Krukow got his moment in the sun once, too, when the game meant a bit more than bonus money. Tonight, as the PNW raven flies, I’ll be about 20 miles from the game — might as well be a million. Maybe MLB should think of how to fix it, but that would probably require real stars to play most of the game like they used to, and that ain’t gonna happen. Sorry to be so cynical on this one, but like GH, the difference between my memory of AS games long ago and the present version of it is a wide chasm…
As Flav said, the old individual team unis mattered.
Just watched Dave Parker’s throw to Max AirTime Carter at home plate to nail Brian Downing in 1979. big man in bright yellow.
Ask yourself why you competed in any sport when you were younger or older? Why did you watch sports?
You play ANY game to win. You watch ANY game for the competition and/or rooting for your team to win. Consequently, it follows that all All Star Games, regardless of the sport, are boring and a waste of time.
it wasn’t boring when I was younger. I loved seeing all those guys together. Names and stats I only knew in the boxscore would come to life in an exhibition game they played. Against eachother! It was fucking awesome. Of course all that has changed now. But there was a time when it was one of the most exciting nights of the Summer.
To each his own . . . If they are not playing to win, I don’t watch.
NL truly wanted to win by time Mays got to SF and beyond. They usually did too, as he often played the entire game with HOF guys sitting on the bench.
Yeah, NL was dominant in the AS game during the Golden Age…
Really don’t get the watered down version of the All Star game that they float out now.
I’m sure kids today, and sure there are still kids that are baseball fans, would like to see their guys in their unis. Making it some kind of barnstorming type game is retarded. What’s not to love?
Hey, Gary Lavelle made it. Looks small next to Carlton.
I still can’t believe Carlton later on was a Giant for a while. He sucked with SF, a shell of his former self.
Pete Rose looks like he’s looking for his bookie, stage right…
The AS game is just not the same as it was. The game of baseball nowadays is situational and to me many of the players are mediocre. Go and look at the 1965 AS lineup.
Gary Templeton with the Cards, Dave Winfield with the Pads. You got 2 different Pirates hats, 2 different Pirates unis, John Candelaria dipping into Dock Ellis’ stash, Expo Ellis Valentine, and half the Cincinnati Reds team. Again, what’s not to love?
Yeah, 7 Reds players, including Foster. Grrr.
When was this — ’77? Seaver was traded to Cincy in June ’77.
Mays is an “honorary” captain — but wearing a Mets uni?
BTW, phuck Cey and Garvey…
Younger guys here don’t remember the 60s or early 70s, when Frank and Brooks Robinson, Mays, Rose, Gibson, etc., would knock your head off to win. Now, that was an all star game.
I watched my first AS games in the 1950s. Were the games really that big a deal or was I just a kid delighted to see on tv for a moment all the stars I mainly read about? The games were great, of course, but so was “childhood’s inexhaustible brain-forest.” (James Merrill, “Self Portrait in Tyvek (TM) Windbreaker” (good poem, astonishing rhyme scheme, by Peter Magowan’s uncle (remember poetry day at the Stick in the 90s?didn’t catch on))
Like this, blade?
By my count, 12 HOFers here.
Rotation of Perry, Bunning, Gibson, Koufax, Marichal.
OF of Aaron, Mays, Clemente.
SF Giants well repped.
1966 NL All Star Roster
Tim McCarver, STL
Willie McCovey, SF
Willie Stargell, PIT
Joe Morgan, HOU
Gaylord Perry, SF
Hank Aaron, ATL
Dick Allen, PHI
Felipe Alou, ATL
Joe Torre, ATL
Bob Veale, PIT
Jim Bunning, PHI
Leo Cardenas, CIN
Roberto Clemente, PIT
Curt Flood, STL
Bob Gibson, STL
Tom Haller, SF
Jim ray Hart, SF
Ron Hunt, NY
Sandy Koufax, LA
Jim Lefebvre, LA
Juan Marichal, SF
Willie Mays, SF
Billy McCool, CIN
Claude Raymond, HOU
Phil Regan, LA
Ron Santo, CHI
Maury Wills, LA
Yep, snarkk . . . To Flav’s point about enjoying the game in the 80s and 90s, I did too, but that’s mostly because I didn’t get the “drift” of what was going on (players not really trying anymore). That ended completely in 2002, where Selig ended the game early. What the fuck??? That was the catalyst so to speak, where I asked myself, “Why the fuck do I watch this game? This is just like the NFL All Star game or NBA All Star Game, except worse – at least they finish their fucking games.”
Anyway, to me, it’s an exhibition game, almost on par with any spring training game.
Agreed…
rather bleak week for baseball especially on TV. Skipped HR Derby, might catch inning or so of AS game once it actually starts, then Friday Giants game is on Apple, Sunday on Peacock. yikes
Trying to watch Warriors in summer league, but beyond a quarter is hard. Beside overall (lack of) quality, no one calling the game lets you know who’s actually in it at the time.
I vaguely remember one AS game probably late ’60s, maybe really early ’70s where Bobby Bonds came out in leadoff wearing white spikes. Very weird and controversial, if you can call non-black colored spikes controversial. Times were simpler, then…
Yeah that’s 77 or 78 I’d think. Templeton went to the Pads in 80 or 81. Winfield to the Yankers right around the same time.
I dug the All star game mainly because I rarely watched AL games and there was no interleague.
Mays in a Mets uni is baffling at best. I know he resented his treatment when he first got to SF so maybe it had something to do with that. And his love for New York.
terrible, awful unis. NL’s are significantly worse.
I was going to join the rest of the DMs here and skip the game, and then realized I have nothing better to do. Where’s Elly De La Cruz? Maybe an all rookie all star game would be more interesting.
Oh, I didn’t see that Elly’s absence is already an issue.
A’s fans are trying to organize a protest. The plan: after the first batter in the top of the fifth inning is announced, fans will stand, hold a moment of silence, and the shout, sell the team. I think that’s the plan. I’m not gonna check. I’m sure about the fifth tho.
2 batters in and it looks like the NL is going to lose again.
I have not been unentertained so far.
Cobb in there
This is what I remember from watching AS games in the old days: the dread of a Giant fucking up.
Oakland’s own Gary Pettis coaching 3rd.
Castlemont HS, Laney College.
Cobb gets through 4th after leadoff walk to Ohtani.
Cobb had a wayward pitch but didn’t shit the bed a la Hammaker and Reuschel.
I’m with Flav. I loved AS game as a kid because i got to see all the greats I never watched play. Now that you see games or highlights on demand it has lost it’s luster. Glad Cobb did well, and more importantly didn’t throw a ton of high stress pitches!
Watched 2 min yesterday. Saw the rapid fire pitches, with Vlad hit a sky high fly ball. While it was still in the air he hit a wicked liner. Hit the wall on the fly. Any lower and a little kid is gonna die. I literally sat up in my seat. CRAZY that they allow kids out there.
A kid got pegged yesterday. knocked out cold.
I certainly watched all the AllStar games when I was a kid, in large part because my Father liked watching it because of the supposed showcase of individual player talents (he never watched AllStar games from other sports because he thought they were silly). I’d say that *excitement* about the game was highest when I was youngest and diminished yearly thereafter. The first one I remember was ’64, when I pulled for the NL mostly because my man Richie Allen was on the team. Allen and Tony Perez hit monster homeruns, from what I remember. Also remember a photo of the 2 of them holding their bats, and the bats looked just absolutely f-ing massive to this young lad, like trees. The whole game felt larger than life to me as a kid, so I loved seeing all those monster stars. Eventually I didn’t care so much anymore, and now it hardly matters, but it was a giant event way back when…
loved reading this. All star games, at least MLB, are one of the things that still tie us to our childhood. And it’s sad now because it’s so different. But that connection to the way I felt when I was a kid watching this game, man, that is still as strong as ever.
Yes…
Doval gets through 7th after 2-out double to J. Ramirez.
Doval threw like a man that inning. Represented SF well.
In line for the win, too, I think.
Maybe young kids today feel the same way about the game as we did as kids….?… I don’t know.
If they’re still up.
i don’t think so. Kids today, they have too much else to do. And they don’t get to experience the mystique we did seeing these mythical figures come together 1 time a year to play this game.
My kids, both of whom were players and serious fans, had no interest in the AS game. They played the mlb computer game constantly. They knew all the stars and generated wild competitive games from them. The AS game was dull. Who knows what the new generation thinks. Maybe someone who works with children. Not me.
this has been a good game.
It’s too bad Soto isn’t a FA after this year. He’s a jerk, but he’d make a mighty fine consolation prize. He’s the same age as Bailey.
Shit, I missed Doval? Saw the Diaz home run but didn’t see him.
Glad I got rewind . . . juuuuust enough
As much (little) as I want the national league to win, I can’t fucking stand crabman. If he gets shelled, I’ll dig it.
Makes me happy the NL took this one.
Of all the pitchers on the team, the Philadelphia mgr taps his own closer to close. Sappy shit. Kimbrel barely did it. Last NL win? 2012, the years the Giants dominated the AS game.
Camilo Tranquillo with the win!
Camilo vultures the W!
Really good game for a change.
Can’t stand Kimbrel but I can feel great that SF stud pitcher Camilo Doval got the WIN!!!
9 freaking years since the NL won? And only led in 4 innings in those 9 years? That’s crazy..
This isn’t my eight year old joy. Thankfully.
10 seasons, i think. Math ain’t my strong suit though.
Do you think Melky cherishes his 2012 AS mvp award?
Missed Doval. Manger a loser. MLB leader in saves throws 100+. Lame he didn’t close it out. Glad he got the win!
Are you Fucking kidding me the MVP Diaz only gets a clear baseball bat?
Wtf happened to the badass truck are corvette in the past? This is downright ridiculous by MLB what a bunch of cheap wads!!!
They had no game in 2020 due to COVID pandemic Chuck, so yeah it’s 9 years
Well, Phillies mgr used Phillies closer. Crabfuck.