It was hard to believe that Frank Thomas was the first White Sox player to hit a home run in an All-Star Game, but otherwise, there were few surprises in the 66th Midsummer Classic, a series initiated in 1933 as a secondary attraction to the Chicago World’s Fair.
As expected, the pitchers were dominant–an aggregate of only 11 hits and five runs. Rare is the game in which the winning team is held to three hits–all of them home runs.
Said Florida’s Jeff Conine: “I would have believed three home runs.”
Conine connected in the eighth to break a 2-2 tie and put the Nationals ahead to stay. The other NL home runs also came late: Craig Biggio in the sixth and Mike Piazza in the seventh. The Americans finished with eight hits, but were unable to score after Thomas’ two-run blast with two outs in the fourth.
All of the position players, for both sides, got into the game. The Nationals used eight pitchers, the Americans seven–almost one pitcher for every inning.
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“It seemed like there was one pitcher for every hitter,” said the Cubs’ Sammy Sosa.
Sosa had one at-bat, with one out and the bases empty in the ninth, and flied deep to right. Said Sosa: “It’s the All-Star Game. Everybody’s got to play.”
No pitcher was around long enough to go through the lineup. The longest stints, six batters each, were by the starters, Los Angeles’ Hideo Nomo for the NL, Seattle’s Randy Johnson for the AL. They worked two scoreless innings each and allowed one baserunner, no one as far as second.
It was, I suppose, good enough theater for the crowd of 50,920 at The Ballpark in Arlington. Still, there was an emptiness because of the lack of baserunners. Aside from their three home runs, the Nationals had only one other baserunner: Philadelphia’s Lenny Dykstra, who walked in the first and was thrown out stealing.
“We’re going to see more and more pitchers,” predicted Phil Garner, the Milwaukee manager. “Once we expand again most of the clubs will have 12-man pitching staffs. And the reason for this is they’re not going to overexpose the weaker pitchers. They’ll face one or two batters and they’re out of there.”
Considering there were 13 pitching changes, the game was played in fast time– 2 hours 40 minutes. This pleased Steve Palermo, the former umpire who wants to speed up the game and diminish scoring.
“Only five runs,” Palermo said as he was leaving the park, obviously satisfied with the minimal offense. A strong offensive game, of course, takes more time.
Whatever, Frank Thomas was in a hurry and departed in midgame, after he had batted in the fourth inning and had been replaced at first base by Boston’s Mo Vaughn.
In explaining his early departure, the Big Hurt said he had to return to Chicago and be in time for a 3:15 p.m. Wednesday workout.
“I want to make it,” Thomas said. “We’ve got to start something good.”
Much of the clubhouse talk before the game was about baseball’s new power hitters, which began and closed with Thomas.
Garner described him as the ideal hitter.
“He has no holes, no weaknesses,” Garner declared. “He hits the ball inside and he hits the ball away. He hits the fastball and he hits the breaking ball.”
Garner characterized San Diego’s Tony Gwynn and the retired Rod Carew as “natural” hitters, but said they couldn’t be compared with Thomas because of their lack of power.
“The most important thing in baseball is to generate runs and Thomas does that better than anybody,” Garner observed.
He also noticed during Monday’s home-run contest the ferocious intensity of Thomas and Cleveland’s Albert Belle. Thomas crashed seven of the 10 longest home runs and beat Belle 3-2 in the final round.
“When they walk on the field, you can feel their power of concentration,” Garner said. “It’s incredible. It took Frank a little while longer to get started, but once he got locked in mentally, the balls started flying.”
It was the 11th All-Star Game for Wade Boggs, a line-drive hitter who disagrees the pitching is weaker than ever before. “There’s never a change in the pitching,” Boggs said. “It’s always of major-league caliber. Some of the hitters are just getting better.”
Boggs insisted that the batting orders, one through nine, are stronger than ever.
“It used to be you could pitch around some of the big hitters. But today the Nos. 7, 8 and 9 guys are driving in 70 and 80 runs. You can’t pitch around everybody. There are only three bases. You can’t put everybody on.”
“I’m the only Judy on the team,” said Milwaukee’s Kevin Seitzer. “Everybody has thunder–lots of thunder. Those guys have to get bored. All they do is hit the ball out.”
Which is what happened here Tuesday night. But not much else.
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