If he can climb Mount Rainier to spread the message from above, Rob Manfred certainly can. Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, had reason to celebrate his sport on Tuesday: attendance was up eight percent over last season, with a faster pace of play, tougher on the bases, improving ratings on television and surprise opponents.
“What do they call it – a virtuous cycle, right?” Manfred said on Tuesday afternoon, before the 93rd edition of the All-Star Game. “The rule changes are good, the players stay positive, the fans are more positive about them because the players are positive about them. So it’s been really great for us.
At one point, though, Manfred admitted that baseball just took a breather. The World Baseball Classic in March ended with a dream matchup: the best player in the world, Shohei Ohtani, hitting his Los Angeles Angels teammate, the decorated Mike Trout, to win the tournament for Japan.
“Sometimes you get lucky,” Manfred agreed. “The culmination of Ohtani and Trout, you can’t plan for that.”
Hours later — with the right-field upper deck still bathed in Seattle’s glorious summer sunshine — baseball almost got lucky again. A two-out walk in the bottom of the ninth inning brought Julio Rodríguez, the Mariners’ young centerpiece, to the plate with a chance to win the game.
Like everyone from Snohomish to Spokane, Rodríguez is thinking of a home run.
“Oh, I’m really trying to win, actually,” he said. “As soon as I saw the guy up first, all I thought was just get a good pitch to drive in and let’s try to win this game.”
Alas, that pitch never came. Although he was eager to play the hero, Rodríguez went for a walk. It set up an anticlimactic finish: Craig Kimbrel of the Philadelphia Phillies hit Cleveland’s José Ramírez, sealing the National League’s 3-2 victory over the American League.
It was the NL’s first win since 2012, but there was no postgame toast from the league president. That position was eliminated years ago, and league differences are now nonexistent, with all teams playing each other in the regular season.
“I don’t think they pay too much attention to that anymore,” said NL manager Rob Thomson of the Phillies, referring to the end of the NL’s losing streak. “I think if you’re playing in a game, you want to win, but I don’t think that matters much.”
The All-Star Game is often a chance to celebrate the sport and look up to the accomplishments of the majors’ greatest showmen. In fact, the first two batters of the game, Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman, smashed deep drives that turned into stylish, midair catches by outfielders from Cuba. Adolis García fought in the sun to rob Acuña in right, and Randy Arozarena — his former teammate in the St. Louis farm system. Louis Cardinals — rose to grab Freeman’s ball in the left field shadow.
“It’s my first time here in the All-Star Game, and I’m glad I got to share the field with Adolis, who is the godfather of my son and my brother,” said Arozarena, of the Tampa Bay Rays, through a translator. “So it was fun.”
Arozarena — the runner-up to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of Toronto in Monday’s home run derby — posted his signature crossed-arms on the warning track after his catch. García, of the Texas Rangers, made another leaping grab on the warning track in the fourth.
“I have all the faith in the world in Adolis that he’s going to make those plays,” said Jonah Heim of the Rangers, the starting AL catcher. “Usually when he jumps, he catches it.”
In the second inning, when Nathan Eovaldi pitched for the AL, Heim was one of six Rangers on the field at the same time. The only other teams to do that were the champion Yankees of 1939 and the star-crossed Brooklyn Dodgers of 1951.
“It’s really special,” Heim said. “When you look around and you have third, short, second, right and pitcher and catcher on the field in the All-Star Game, you can’t really beat that.”
The Atlanta Braves tried; their entire infield played together in the bottom of the fifth inning. That might be an evocative visual, but for the third year in a row, MLB has put teams in generic Nike uniforms, making the best players look as unrecognizable as possible.
It’s fitting, then, that Tuesday’s Most Valuable Player was perhaps the most anonymous All-Star of all: Colorado Rockies catcher Elias Díaz, who hit a two-run, go-ahead homer to stop Félix of the Baltimore Orioles. Baptist in the eighth.
Díaz, 32, signed with Colorado in 2020 after five uneventful seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was the sole representative for the last-place Rockies, but earned his way onto the roster by hitting .277 with nine home runs and an upbeat outlook.
“It’s unbelievable,” Díaz said through a translator, when asked about his transformation from Pirates castoff to All-Star MVP. I kept my confidence and stayed positive. I’m just happy to be here now.”
He did more than show up, leaving with a crystal bat named for Ted Williams, a prize that eluded all the headliners — including Ohtani, who struck out and walked in his two plate appearances.
Yes, Ohtani said, he heard people chanting “Come to Seattle” as he took a shower, a recruiting plea from the 47,159 paying fans who want Ohtani to move as a free agent this off-season.
“Never experienced anything like that,” Ohtani said through a translator, adding later, “Every time I come here the fans are passionate, they’re really into the game. So it’s very exciting.”
Ohtani spent off-seasons in Seattle and said the city was beautiful. He wouldn’t say if fellow All-Stars made more subtle pitches for him to be their teammate.
“I want to keep it a secret,” he said.