When Armageddon comes, Dodgers fans will be doing “The Wave”…the teams I would most like to see in the post season are the Mariners, the Phillies, the Tigers, and the Blue Jays…the Orioles will never win it all again unless they bring back the caps with the beautiful, realistic birds on them and ditch the truly ugly “O’s” version…speaking of birds, let’s add the Cardinals to that playoff wish list just because they do portray real looking birds on their uniforms too…the team that most deserves a real ball yard to play their home games on is Tamps Bay but they will probably never get one… they would get one if they moved to Havana…I was determined to make it through All Star Game this season but sadly walked away in the seventh inning. Crass merchandising,tiny amounts of give a shit about the actual game, pseudo-patriotic hypocrisy derbies and commercial ads bloatathons. Yuck.

I found out later about how the tie game was “won”. Double yuck. Obsessions with home runs and miles per hour this and that are really messing with our beautiful game. Six days after my ninth birthday I watched my first all star game along with a few friends. It was played at County Stadium in Milwaukee. A three run home run by Mickey Mantle helped the American League take a 4-0 lead in the very first inning. He hit it off Robin Roberts of the Phillies. They added a run in the 6th inning to make it 5-0. The National League scored two in the seventh and three in the eighth to tie the score. In the bottom of the 12th inning, Donora Pennsylvania’s Stan Musial won it with a home run off Boston’s Frank Sullivan. Each starting pitcher pitched three innings and the second pitcher for each side also pitched three innings. Gene Conley for the host team was the winning pitcher. Pitches were not counted and no one on either team wore a microphone. We didn’t give a damn because we had not tuned in to hear players talk. It was still daylight outside so we we went out and played some ball.

The American League outfield consisted of Ted Williams in left, Mantle in center, and Al Kaline in right. The National League outfield voted in by the fans was Del Ennis in left, Duke Snider in center, and Don Mueller in right field. Musial, Willie Mays, and Henry Aaron eventually replaced them . Combined with a stupendous World Series that year, I became a lover of baseball for life.