In the Wee Hours, Big Implications

Game Nearly Taken to Illogical Conclusion

NEW YORK, July 15 -- It was still Tuesday night, not yet Wednesday morning, and the 79th All-Star Game was still a somewhat recognizable form of baseball -- albeit a glorified exhibition in which the quest for victory was asked to co-exist with the antipodal goal of putting on a good show -- when Commissioner Bud Selig, the first pangs of worry beginning to set in, dispatched a trusted lieutenant to each dugout to reinforce a message that had been sent before the game: no ties.

In the American League dugout, Manager Terry Francona regarded Selig's messenger, MLB Executive Vice President Jimmie Lee Solomon, and responded to his gentle reminder with a simple question: "Can you pitch?"

In the aftermath of the AL's 4-3, 15-inning victory Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium -- a game that lasted 4 hours 50 minutes (the longest all-star game in history) and required the services of all 63 available players -- all of baseball struggled to come to grips less with what happened on the field, than with what almost happened.

This is what almost happened: Baseball came within perhaps one inning, two at most, of seeing home-field advantage in the World Series -- a historically significant distinction that could just as easily be tied to something fundamentally competitive, such as the team with the best regular season record or the league with the most wins in interleague play -- decided by a pitching matchup of David Wright against J.D. Drew.

"I don't know if I would have gotten anyone out," said Drew, the Boston Red Sox right fielder, who was presented the game's most valuable player trophy on the field with the stadium clock behind him reading 1:54 a.m., "but I would have thrown something up there."

Wright, the New York Mets' third baseman, apparently was the National League's designated last-resort pitcher, as both leagues were down to their final real pitcher -- Tampa Bay's Scott Kazmir for the AL, who had thrown 104 pitches just two days earlier and whom the Rays' management had asked Francona not to use unless it was an emergency, and Philadelphia's Brad Lidge for the NL, who had warmed up a staggering six times during the course of the game.

"We really had no idea what was going to happen," said Michael Young of the Texas Rangers, who drove in the winning run in the 15th with a sacrifice fly to right field. "We were starting to rack our brains about who was available. We knew we were down to the last two guys. [Tampa Bay third baseman] Evan Longoria volunteered to pitch. I said I'd have his back on that one."

That it ever reached that point was partly a function of the sheer length of the game, of course, but blame can also be found in the contradictory, dual natures of the all-star game itself in the era of "This Time It Counts" -- in which managers are under pressure to get as many players into the game as possible (except those whose GMs have given the hands-off signal) while not losing sight of the ultimate goal of winning.

Some of the seemingly innocuous moves made earlier in the game -- such as throwing starting pitchers out there for only one or two innings at a time, or Francona's decision to pull Los Angeles Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez after just two batters in the ninth to add to the drama of Mariano Rivera's entrance -- served the former purpose but were almost disastrous as they pertained to the latter.

By the time the game reached extra innings, the managers were forced to ask pitchers to do things they almost never do -- some of which, such as calling upon Kazmir to pitch on one day's rest, could subject them to an unnecessary injury risk.

And before Kazmir came on in the 15th, it was left to Baltimore Orioles closer George Sherrill -- a lefty whose entire big league career prior to this season was spent as a specialist who typically faced only one or two batters per game -- to hold off the NL for 2 1/3 innings, his longest stint in nearly four years.

"I wanted to keep Kazmir out of it," Sherrill said.

Young argued that it wouldn't have been so bad to wind up with a tie outcome. "You can't [anticipate] a 15-, 16-inning all-star game," he said. "And if it does [happen], there's nothing wrong with a tie, in my mind. . . . I mean, if you go 16 innings and no one wins, you can [call it] a tie and be pretty happy with it."

Of course, with home-field advantage in the World Series hanging in the balance -- a stipulation that was prompted by the infamous 11-inning tie game in Milwaukee in 2002, when the managers ran out of pitchers -- that was not an option.

"Everybody understood the ground rules," Selig told reporters later. "We were playing the game to its conclusion."

And so the game plowed forward, into the wee hours, each pitch bringing the possibility of a satisfying resolution, yes -- but also of a devastating injury -- and taking the game perilously close to the spectacle of two herky-jerky position players lobbing pitches toward the plate that could influence something that really, truly matters in October.