86th Major League Baseball All-Star Game

In front of a sold out crowd at the Great American Ballpark the American League defeated the National League 6-3 for the third year in a row.   The 86th annual Baseball All-Star Game was back in Cincinnati for a week long celebration of baseball at the oldest franchise in the game.   It saw Pete Rose return to the place where he started and also start the conversation to be re-instated into the game of baseball.

With the weather playing games with the fans for 3 days it turned out to be good weather for the annual mid-summer classic.  For the first time in the history of the game there were 33 players in their 1st All-Star game and 20 players younger than 25.   It was a lot of new faces in this game and didn't compare to the first All-Star Game that I attended in Detroit in 1971 at Tiger Stadium.   There would be 22 future Hall of Famers in that game.    I can see that a few of today's players making the Hall of Fame but not as many in the first game that I saw. 

The Detroit Tigers would have 4 players take part and actually had the winning pitcher in the contest David Price pitching one perfect inning.   Jose Iglesias would make a fine defensive play in 8th inning.   The American League would pull ahead of the Nationals in the fourth inning by getting two runs off of former Great Lakes Loon Clayton Kershaw who took the loss.  Kershaw was a last minute replacement on the All-Star squad.

One of the highlights of the game was the pitching of Aroldis Chapman who would pitch the 9th inning and hit 100 mph twelve times in the inning.  He would strike out all three batters.   All-Star Game MVP Mike Trout (2nd year in a row) would lead off the game with a home run and later score a run after walking.   Cincinnati would pull off a great All-Star week with 43, 661 fans attending and honoring many of the games greatest players alive today.   Major League baseball will be hard to top itself again in the future.   The American League now will have the home field advantage for the World Series.