Give Mark Buehrle credit for setting the tone in an All-Star Game that did not drag despite its one-sided nature.
Buehrle, the American League starter, was in regular-season form for his two innings on the mound, working fast and throwing strikes.
When he left after retiring the National League in the second inning, it was 9:06 Eastern. That was only 22 minutes after he threw the first pitch of the game, a ball to Philadelphia’s Bobby Abreu.
A ball? Wouldn’t you work carefully to a guy who had hit 41 home runs the night before?
Abreu, who had won Monday’s Home Run Derby, eventually lined an opposite-field single to left. Buehrle then got Carlos Beltran to ground into a double play, which meant Albert Pujols’ single to center didn’t hurt him.
Buehrle struck out three of the last five batters he faced. He got the Cubs’ Derrek Lee to swing late on a cut fastball to end the first and ended the second with back-to-back swinging strikeouts of Mike Piazza and Jeff Kent.
Buehrle, working on three days’ rest after facing Oakland on Friday, was the second White Sox pitcher in three years to start for the AL. Esteban Loaiza, who would go on to win 21 games, started the 2003 game at U.S. Cellular Field.
A familiar voice
Ernie Harwell, the legendary Detroit play-by-play man, received one of the loudest ovations of the night at Comerica Park.
Before the bottom of the fourth inning, the scoreboard screen showed bits of the speech he gave at Cooperstown when he received baseball’s top broadcasting award.
Fans looked to the press box, where Harwell was watching the game. They applauded and then began to chant “Ernie, Ernie, Ernie” as Mark Teixeira stepped into the batter’s box.
Letting him have it
Texas left-hander Kenny Rogers, who is appealing the 20-game suspension he was given for attacking cameramen before a game recently, was booed loudly both when he was introduced and when he came in to pitch in the seventh inning.
The oddest moment came when the crowd booed him as he walked off the mound after striking out Milwaukee’s Carlos Lee to end the inning.
“I wanted to pitch,” said Rogers, who gave up a two-run homer to Andruw Jones. “I didn’t pitch last year in the game, and I think at this stage of my career it’s something that is not expected from me, but I’m happy to be here. I know I’ve earned the right with the way I’ve pitched but there’s a lot of other stuff going on. . . . I hope that everything that happened, we just put our attention on the game and keep our focus on that.”
Future sites
Commissioner Bud Selig said the 2008 All-Star Game will go to an American League stadium. He altered the traditional rotation by awarding the 2007 game to San Francisco’s SBC Park even though Pittsburgh’s PNC Park already had next year’s game.
“There were enough compelling reasons that I thought it was best for all [to give the ’07 game to San Francisco],” Selig said. “But the American League will get 2008, and maybe down the line I might give the American League two in a row.”
The two most likely sites for 2008 are Yankee Stadium, which last hosted the All-Stars in 1977 and could be in its final season in ’08, and Tampa Bay, which never has had an All-Star Game.
