ASG 2009

by ~ July 14th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

I wasn’t planning on watching the entire All Star Game but it breezed by so quickly that it was over before I knew it.  At 2 hours and 23 minutes it was the fastest All Star Game since 1988.  Most of the pitchers worked quickly and the hitters were hacking.

I didn’t take notes during the game, but a couple things stuck with me.

Felix Hernandez has begun rotating backwards as part of his motion, similar to what Erik Bedard does.  I’m not sure when this started, but I want to say it was at some point this season.  But in this All Star Game I feel like it was more noticeable than ever before.  My first thought that this is the type of thing that we’re going to see get more pronounced as the stress/adrenaline level rises– sort of a Chad Bradford-syndrome, if you will.  Interesting.

My allegiances were all over the place in this game.  I started out rooting for the American League, but as the game progressed I realized how I was fans of way more National League players than AL, so I found myself rooting a bit for the NL.  But once Charlie Manuel intentionally walked Victor Martinez I was rooting for the AL all the way.  That was ridiculous.  V-Mart’s reaction told the whole story.  He was excited to get an ASG at bat in and had it taken away from him.  This is just one example of why home field advantage in the World Series SHOULD NOT be tied to an exhibition.

The African American representation in this game was great to see.  The number of African Americans in the big leagues had been plummeting for years but has finally seen it’s first uptick the last two seasons for the first time since the 1980s.  The ten African Americans (Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Adam Jones, Ryan Howard, Carl Crawford, Prince Fielder, Justin Upton, Orlando Hudson, Edwin Jackson, Torii Hunter) on the All Star rosters were the most we’ve seen in years and can be nothing but a positive when it comes to turning that uptick into a trend.

That game moved too quickly for me to retain anything else.  Good stuff.

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  • Project Monkey

    It’s always awesome to hear other All Stars talk about a guy from your team. Pujols talking about left handed hitter and how Ichiro is amazing. Then Morneau (sp?) talking about how serious on the field Ichiro is, but in the club house he’s hilarious. I guess it’s awesome for me because the last 10 years of my life have been surrounded by (in order) Cardinal fans, Twin fans, and curently Royal fans. You don’t hear much about west coast teams, and much less the NW.

  • http://whatwouldwesleydo.wordpress.com/ wrob4343

    I actually noted to myself how many black players there were in the game as well. Brandon Jennings was on JRIB when Keyshawn Johnson attempted to string together complete sentences and he mentioned how expensive it was to play ball as a reason blacks in America don’t play, which I agree with, but as someone who grew up with enough money to play opportunity was also a problem. At school me or my brother weren’t good enough to play but we could play better than anybody in a park or rec league… I guess I think it’s more of an institutional problem than it’s made out to be.

    But I digress. That was a great game, and there are many, many reasons for the ASG to not decide home field and that walk was one of them. I’m just glad Felix A) didn’t intentionally walk Pujols and B) didn’t give up a moonshot.