Originally Published: July 15, 2003

Along with victory, AL also whiff kings

The AL set a record Tuesday by fanning 11 times. Considering the outcome, Mike Scioscia likely won't care.

Print Share
Stark By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com
Archive

CHICAGO -- The AL team whiffed 11 times Tuesday, the most ever in a nine-inning All-Star Game. Here are the previous 10-whiff games and the pitcher who ran up the most K's in that game:

1999 NL -- Pedro Martinez
1986 AL -- Fernando Valenzuela
1959 AL -- Don Drysdale
1956 NL -- Billy Pierce
1934 AL -- Carl Hubbell

  • Not to suggest it had been a while since the National League had an inning as big as its five-run fifth. But the last time the NL had an inning that big, Willie McCovey homered in it off Blue Moon Odom. That was a five-run third inning in 1969.

  • And the last time any team had an inning that big, it was the previous game hosted by the White Sox -- a seven-run third inning by the AL in 1983, at the old Comiskey Park. That was the fabled inning in which Atlee Hammaker allowed the only grand slam in All-Star history, to Fred Lynn.

    Jason Giambi
    AP PhotoJason Giambi hammers one of three American League home runs.

  • What was so unusual about Jason Giambi's seventh-inning home run off Billy Wagner? Wagner has faced 371 left-handed hitters in his career (in the regular season, anyway) -- and given up only seven home runs. Left-handers are hitting .182 against him this year, with one extra-base hit. And Giambi had come to the plate 106 times this year against left-handers -- and homered only twice. He's hitting .153 against left-handers, with three extra-base hits.

  • No Rockie had ever homered in an All-Star Game before Todd Helton hit one off Shigetoshi Hasegawa. Garret Anderson was the second Angel to homer in an All-Star Game. But amazingly, their only two homers came on the South Side of Chicago. The other was Lynn's grand slam off Hammaker in 1983.

  • Anderson won the Home Run Derby on Monday, then won the all-star MVP award Tuesday. According to the Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR's David Vincent, only one other man has ever won both in the same year -- Cal Ripken Jr. in 1991.

  • It took Hasegawa 23 pitches to give up four runs in this game. He'd allowed four runs all season. The four runs Hasegawa gave up in two-thirds of an inning were more than Jim Bunning and Juan Marichal gave up in their All-Star careers -- and both of them appeared in eight All-Star Games and pitched 18 innings.

  • Roger Clemens' final All-Star Game career totals: 1-0, 2.45 ERA, 11 IP, 6 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 7 K. Clemens was scored upon only in 1998 at Coors Field (two-run single by Tony Gwynn) and the 1991 game at Skydome (Andre Dawson homer).

  • It wasn't a great night for Edgar Martinez (one fastball off the helmet, two strikeouts). But he did break the record for most times as a DH in All-Star history (four). Harold Baines (three) and Bobby Bonilla (two).

  • That NL lineup featured Cardinals hitting 1-2-3 (Edgar Renteria, Jim Edmonds, Albert Pujols). According to the Elias Sports Bureau, only three other All-Star Games have featured 1-2-3 hitters from the same team:

    1946: Dom DiMaggio, Johnny Pesky and Ted Williams (Red Sox).
    1961: Norm Cash, Rocky Colavito and Al Kaline (Tigers).
    1978: Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and George Foster (Reds).

    Useless Internet Info
    Cyberspace is a happening place. If we didn't know that before, we sure ought to know it now -- because life out there in cyberspace has shaped this All-Star Game like never before.

    For the first time this year, baseball broke down its final vote totals into two fascinating categories -- online votes and offline votes. And it yielded some interesting insights into how many of these All-Stars got here:

    Buddy Lists?
    Player Vote diff.
    Gary Sheffield 986,302
    Javy Lopez 887,796
    Rafael Furcal 810,990
    Andruw Jones 782,437
    Albert Pujols 742,934
    Edgar Renteria 702,102
    Marcus Giles 700,877
    Scott Rolen 626,898
    Chipper Jones 551,011
    Manny Ramirez 502,714
    N. Garciaparra 502,115
    Jorge Posada 501,021
    Jim Edmonds 500,298

  • Had there been no such thing as Internet voting, all of these players would have wound up being elected to start this All-Star Game: Mike Piazza (over Javier Lopez), Jeff Kent (over Marcus Giles), Sammy Sosa (over Gary Sheffield), Giambi (over Carlos Delgado) and Torii Hunter (over Manny Ramirez). Of those five, four didn't even make this All-Star team. So do they collect their All-Star bonuses now?

  • On the other hand, had there been only online voting, just two starting spots would have changed. Nomar Garciaparra would have been elected at shortstop over Alex Rodriguez. And Torii Hunter would have made it over Hideki Matsui.

  • So how, you wonder, did Hunter end up not making the All-Star team when he would have been a winner in either the online or offline vote? Well, it's pretty basic, really. Ramirez got more than half a million more votes online than he got in the ballparks. So that pushed his final total past Hunter's. And Matsui got nearly 300,000 more votes in the ballparks than Hunter did. So that pushed his final total past Hunter's, too. And ultimately, Hunter lost out to both of them by under 200,000 votes.

  • After all the debate about whether Sosa should have been an All-Star and why he wasn't, it all came down to the Internet. Only Barry Bonds (776,830) got more votes in the park than Sosa (667,310) among NL outfielders. But Sosa was only sixth in online votes. So he finished fourth overall -- and stayed home.

  • Gary Sheffield, meanwhile, might be the cyberspace fan of the year. He finished ninth among NL outfielders in stadium voting with only 273,488 -- barely more than Jay Payton (234,495). But in the online voting, Sheffield was second only to Pujols with 1,259,790 votes -- 986,302 more than he got offline. That was the biggest online-offline differential of any candidate.

  • One thing that's clear is that there were big-time online voting campaigns in Atlanta and St. Louis. Of the eight players who got at least 600,000 more Internet votes than in-stadium votes, all eight were either Braves or Cardinals.

    More Useless All-Star Info

  • We know the Boone brothers -- Bret and Aaron -- aren't the first set of brothers to make All-Star teams in the same year. In fact, they're the ninth. But their challenge is to become the third set of brothers to get a hit in the same All-Star Game. The two who did:

    Roberto and Sandy Alomar -- 1992 and 1998
    Joe and Dom DiMaggio -- 1941 and 1949

  • Mike Williams set an All-Star record this year that wasn't quite at the top of his list of goals in life. His 6.44 ERA is the highest in history by any pitcher who made an All-Star team, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

  • Of the top 10 active home-run hitters, only one -- Gary Sheffield -- was a Home Run Derby participant. The nine guys ahead of him are Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Fred McGriff, Junior Griffey, Juan Gonzalez, Andres Galarraga and Jeff Bagwell. The last Derby to go off with none of those nine involved was the 1991 Derby in Toronto. The eight participants that night: Cal Ripken Jr. (who won), Cecil Fielder, Joe Carter, Danny Tartabull, Paul O'Neill, George Bell, Chris Sabo and Howard Johnson.

  • Until Clemens sneaked onto the AL team Monday, the only one of the top 10 active pitchers with the most career strikeouts who was on either All-Star team was John Smoltz. The other eight are Randy Johnson, Greg Maddux, Curt Schilling, Pedro Martinez, Kevin Brown (made the team but on the DL), Mike Mussina, Kevin Appier and Hideo Nomo. The last All-Star Game in which none of those eight pitchers pitched was the 1990 game in (serious coincidence alert coming) Chicago. The men who pitched that night at Wrigley Field: Bob Welch, Dave Stieb, Bret Saberhagen, Bobby Thigpen, Chuck Finley and Dennis Eckersley for the AL, and Jack Armstrong, Ramon Martinez, Dennis Martinez, Frank Viola, Dave Smith, Jeff Brantley, Rob Dibble, Randy Myers and John Franco for the NL.

  • Speaking of Smoltz, he was the winning pitcher in the 1996 All-Star Game and the losing pitcher in the 1989 game. Not only was he the only member of this year's All-Star staffs who had both won and lost an All-Star Game, until Clemens came aboard, Smoltz was the only member of either staff who had won or lost an All-Star Game. The only other active pitcher who has won and lost an All-Star Game: James Baldwin. And the only other pitcher since the 1960s with both a win and a loss is Dave Stieb.

  • If Clemens hadn't changed every note in this column, this would have been the first season since 1995 in which no Yankees pitchers made the All-Star team.

  • Meanwhile, Russ Ortiz's presence means the Braves had had at least one starting pitcher on the All-Star team in 13 straight seasons. Even more amazingly, that takes in eight different pitchers: Ortiz, Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, John Burkett, Steve Avery, Denny Neagle and Kevin Millwood.

  • ESPN research genius Jeff Bennett reports that Esteban Loaiza's nomination to start for the AL marks the first time since 1959 that a pitcher from either Chicago team has started an All-Star Game. The White Sox have had only four previous starters -- none since Early Wynn in '59. The Cubs have had only one starter -- Claude Passeau in 1944. Of the 16 original, pre-expansion franchises, they have had the two fewest pitchers start the All-Star Game.

  • Loaiza is also only the third pitcher in the expansion era (post-1961) to start an All-Star Game in his home park. And he had no shot to top the last one -- Pedro Martinez (2 IP, 5 K, WP) in Fenway Park in 1999. The other was Steve Rogers in Montreal in 1982 (3 IP, 1 ER, 2 K, WP).

  • This is the second straight season in which both All-Star managers also played in the All-Star Game. But before that, it had happened only four times in history -- and once since 1955. The same-year managers who have done both:

    2003: Mike Scioscia-Dusty Baker
    2002: Joe Torre-Bob Brenly
    1994: Cito Gaston-Jim Fregosi
    1955: Al Lopez-Leo Durocher
    1935: Mickey Cochrane-Frank Frisch *
    1934: Joe Cronin-Bill Terry *

    (* -- the four managers in the '30s were all player-managers at the time.)

  • Ichiro Suzuki has now been the leading vote-getter for three straight seasons. Other men who have done that: Junior Griffey (1996-97-98-99) and Rod Carew (1977-78-79). Ryne Sandberg led all NL players in 1990-91-92 but didn't lead the majors in votes.

  • Scott Rolen's All-Star claim to fame: He has been elected to start at third base for two straight years -- for two different teams. Last two guys to do that at any position was A-Rod and Manny Ramirez in 2000-2001.

  • Jamie Moyer is the third player to be elected to his first All-Star team at age 40, but the other two guys to do it barely qualify. Satchel Paige (age 45 in 1952) didn't even make his major-league debut until age 40. And Connie Marrero (age 40 in 1951) didn't make his big-league debut until age 39.

  • Most RBI since last year's All-Star Game:

    Albert Pujols 147
    Carlos Delgado 143
    Vernon Wells 142
    Garret Anderson 138
    Manny Ramirez 138

  • Most home runs since last year's All-Star Game:

    Alex Rodriguez 52
    Barry Bonds 49
    Jim Thome 49
    Jason Giambi 45
    Manny Ramirez 45

  • Most wins since last year's All-Star Game:

    Roy Halladay 23
    Kevin Millwood 22
    Mark Mulder 22
    Andy Pettitte 22
    David Wells 21
    Barry Zito 20
    Russ Ortiz 20

  • Lowest ERAs among qualified starters since last year's All-Star Game:

    RHP: Pedro Martinez 2.02
    LHP: Randy Wolf 2.73

    Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

    • ALSO SEE

    MORE MLB HEADLINES

    Insider

    MOST SENT STORIES ON ESPN.COM

    Most Sent »

    TOP STORIES FROM ABC NEWS