It's a game with no clock and it gives possession of the ball to the defence, yet it is truly remarkable that so many people who should know better spent much of yesterday biting their nails and lighting candles and hoping the All-Star Game never, ever goes 15 innings again.
The same people who think commissioner Bud Selig complicated things when he decided the exhibition game would determine home-field advantage in the World Series, after a tie game in Milwaukee in 2002, now want to add even more silly restrictions and rules in an attempt to bring certainty to an uncertain game.
Newsflash, people: 15 innings won't likely happen again, so sit back and relax.
What is also remarkable is that with all the kvetching about how close the All-Star Game came to seeing a position player - New York Mets third baseman David Wright - pressed into pitching (my god, the horror! The humanity!), so many people missed the storyline of the American League's 4-3 win over the National League.
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Derek Jeter didn't.
That storyline involved the AL manager, Terry Francona. As if two World Series wins weren't enough, the Boston Red Sox's skipper managed the game with 83 years of Yankee Stadium history on his shoulders and decades of a bitter, sometimes brawling rivalry between his team and the New York Yankees. Francona managed to get Mariano Rivera in the game in a meaningful situation and showed a deft touch in removing Yankees starters Alex Rodriguez and Jeter through mid-inning defensive switches, allowing the Yankees fans to give their modern-day heroes the send-off they deserve in what the standings say could be the last 'big' game in the stadium's final year. He is a man with an exquisite sense of timing and of the moment. Frankly, he should have been the most valuable player of the game.
"I have the utmost respect for Terry, just the way he handles himself and the respect he gives," Jeter, the Yankees captain, said in the wee hours of Wednesday morning. "I've been running into him, oh, back I guess when I was playing in the minor leagues and I've always respected him. I'm not surprised he handled things the way he did. Not at all."
Francona was drained after the game, saying he was "more nervous before the game than I ever thought I'd be," and that "you wait a lot of your life to do something like this. And in the last two hours, it wasn't a lot of fun."
The game's MVP, Red Sox outfielder J.D. Drew, felt the same fatigue, in no small measure because of what he saw his manager going through. "I'd look at him [Francona] and the staff and as the game went on you could tell they were racking their brains. They just had so much to think about."
It was a boffo night for all three Canadian-born All-Stars. New Westminster, B.C.'s Justin Morneau, the winner of Monday night's Home Run Derby, scored the winning run on a close play at the plate off of Michael Young's sacrifice fly. Morneau also had a double.
Russell Martin, the Los Angeles Dodgers' catcher from Chelsea, Que., played nine innings in relief of Geovany Soto before handing off the duties to Brian McCann for the last inning. Martin threw out a base runner on a night when the AL stole six bases, had an opposite-field single after a tough seven-pitch at bat with Rivera, and showed textbook form in blocking the plate on a throw from Nate McLouth, cutting down Dioner Navarro from scoring the winning run in the 11th. And Chicago Cubs pitcher Ryan Dempster of Gibsons, B.C., worked a 1-2-3 ninth and then later said he felt sorry for all those bar owners who'd been promising their female patrons that Jeter really would be showing up in their establishment after the game, which ended at 1:37 a.m. EDT.
Fuel had been poured on the Red Sox/Yankees rivalry when Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon claimed he and his wife - "pregnant with a little child," he said - received death threats during a parade before the game as a result of what he said was incorrect reporting on his statements about whether he or Rivera should close.
Francona used Papelbon in the eighth and he gave up a run and was booed off the field. With the score tied 3-3, Francona let Francisco Rodriguez start the ninth and then took him out for Rivera with one out and a runner on first. His reasoning was simple: had Rodriguez induced a double play and the AL scored a run in the bottom of the ninth, he would have left Rivera unused.
Rivera, whose entrance into the game to his trademark Enter Sandman song had the stadium shaking, pitched 1 2/3innings and said the night was "one of my best," - and, really, isn't that what it's all about?
The last All-Star Game that took this long was played in 1967, so let's all start worrying about the 2049 game, okay? The Yankees' most recent championship seasons were characterized by postseason games in which their resolute, grinding, offence wore down opponents and caused games to drag on and on. The 2008 All-Stars were simply living up to an example they'd seen set by players named Jeter, Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada.
It's not a game for clock watchers, but it can be a game for clock punchers.
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