Willie Mays top headliner in Giants’ AllStar history.
Mays, Sandoval thrived at baseball’s showcase
Having trouble getting in the mood for Tuesday night’s AllStar Game? Let’s veer off nostalgia’s main highway and onto a side road. Let’s talk triples in Kansas City.
As the 2012 game began at Kauffman Stadium, the National League’s starting battery was Matt Cain (who pitched two shutout innings) and Giants teammate Buster Posey, with Pablo Sandoval at third. With the bases loaded in the first inning, Sandoval stepped up against Justin Verlander and deadpulled a shot down the rightfield line, resulting in the first basesloaded triple in AllStar Game history.
The aftermath: Sandoval faced Verlander again in the World Series that fall, and it went pretty well. Sandoval homered three times in Game 1, two of them off Verlander.
Drift back now to the 1960 game at Kansas City’s late, semigreat Municipal
Stadium. National League manager Walt Alston surveyed his dugout before the game and marveled at the likes of Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente, Ernie Banks, Stan Musial, Dick Groat, Eddie Mathews and Vada Pinson.
He had someone special in mind, though, to christen the affair: Willie Mays. If anything captured the spirit and appeal of the NL back then, it was Mays leading off — with a triple, off Boston’s Bill Monbouquette, the first of Mays’ three hits on the day.
The aftermath: A year later, the scene was Candlestick Park. The NL trailed 43 heading into the bottom of the ninth inning, and if that were the case Tuesday night, you’d watch a bunch of backups trying to handle the assignment. Not this day. Mays came to the plate for the fifth time, following an Aaron single with a runscoring double. Frank Robinson was hit by a pitch, Clemente drilled a walkoff single to right, and drive home safely. “When it was a game,” as they say, the legends stayed late.
Also coming to mind:
Everyone on Tuesday night’s rosters is a deserving presence, but it’s a shame some pure entertainers are missing: Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Yasiel Puig, Juan Soto, Madison Bumgarner and Josh Donaldson from the NL alone. On the other side: Aaron Judge, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (who competed in the Home Run Derby), Rafael Devers and especially Shohei Ohtani. How can he not be there? Aside from the global implications, Ohtani is hitting .303 with 14 homers in just 53 games — and when you add his blazing speed, he’s a firstrate show.
When it won’t be so bad to see the substitutions: Watching the A’s Matt Chapman and Cleveland’s Francisco Lindor take over the left side of the American League infield. A grand theater for the spectacular. Perhaps we’ll hear a postgame debate, “Who made the better play at third, Chapman or (Nolan) Arenado?
Disappointing that Washington’s Max Scherzer won’t be able to pitch. (He worked seven innings Saturday and is concerned about his ailing back.) He’s a raging competitor, the most watchable starter in either league, and if they let him hit, he’d probably hammer a single up the middle.
On the other hand: Nice to see the Reds’ Sonny Gray replacing Scherzer on the roster. The timing is great, Gray coming off eight scoreless innings with a careerhigh 12 strikeouts against Milwaukee on Wednesday. Gray was previously honored in 2015, during his best season with the A’s (147, 2.73 ERA), but he did not appear in the game.
What we really don’t want to see: Extra innings and the intrusion of a new rule that would place a runner on second base to start each halfinning. Talk about “manufacturing” a rally. It seems someone fell from the sky, perhaps by invisible parachute, and laced a double.
Unlikely, but highly recommendable: Both managers agree to play straightup defense (allowing for guarding the lines, etc.) and forget about the aesthetic disaster of a radical shift.
A bit more nostalgia: In 1990, the A’s representatives were Rickey Henderson, Bob Welch, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Dennis Eckersley. In 1973, the middle season of the A’s run of three Series titles, Oakland sent Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Sal Bando, Campy Campaneris, Ken Holtzman and Rollie Fingers to the game. (With another six in ’74, Joe Rudi replacing Holtzman.)
The Giants peaked in 1966, with Mays, Juan Marichal, Willie McCovey, Gaylord Perry, Tom Haller and Jim Ray Hart in the game. Remarkably, Mays and Marichal teamed up as NL representatives nine times, including eight years in a row (196269).
Part of MLB Network’s broadcasting crew at the Futures Game, Harold Reynolds raved about the mechanics and defensive presence of catcher Joey Bart, the Giants’ top prospect. In Bart’s final season at Georgia Tech, “he was the only catcher in college baseball who called his own game,” Reynolds said. “I understand college coaches are under a lot of pressure, but the game is about the kids. That’s the beauty of baseball at any level: allowing the kids to make decisions and adjustments. It’s really a shame in high school and college when you see coaches call all the pitches.”
And how did Bart pull that off ? “I just stopped looking over there” to the dugout, he told Reynolds.