NEW YORK — The biggest All-Star in town is over the hill, can’t move in either direction, is heavy maintenance, will soon be replaced by a newer and younger version and, just between me and you, smells pretty foul when the weather turns humid and sticky.
Yet, this is the All-Star who’ll get the loudest applause come Tuesday.
Yankee Stadium deserves it. For the first time in a while, perhaps ever, the setting of the baseball All-Star Game will overwhelm the players who’ll participate in it. This game is not about Derek Jeter or Albert Pujols, Ryan Howard or Chipper Jones, or anyone in either uniform. This is about a stadium on death row being granted one final wish before the wrecking ball, a shrine with a rich past and a limited future.
A good bit of the fans who’ll fill the seats Tuesday night will gawk more at the Stadium than any player. That’s usually the case, anyway; Yankee Stadium doubles as a prime New York tourist attraction and a baseball field. People from everywhere come to the South Bronx to worship at baseball’s altar, to be in the same place where Lou Gehrig described himself as the luckiest man on the face of the Earth, where Joe D chased down fly balls and where the Babe hit them. Of course, the worshippers aren’t really congregating at the original Yankee Stadium; that was nipped and tucked decades ago. But you get the idea. If the refurbished Stadium isn’t exactly the real deal, at least it still sits on real sacred ground.
The Stadium last played host to the All-Star Game in 1977, back when the Yankees, as a whole, caused more headlines than an Alex Rodriguez martial breakup. Then, the Stadium wasn’t the star of stars. That distinction went to Reggie Jackson, according to Reggie Jackson. Don Sutton was the MVP of a game that, like most All-Star games, inspired lots of yawns and was utterly unmemorable. That’s the thing about All-Star games: Unless Pete Rose is nearly killing someone with a hard slide, nobody remembers much about the game two days later, much less two years later.
The same will apply come Tuesday. Most July baseball games are pretty routine, and the midseason classic isn’t an exception. The pitchers will throw for an inning or two, the managers will make every effort to see that everyone gets at least one at-bat, and the sellout crowd won’t cheer too hard for either team because there are no allegiances. Plus, half the Stadium will be filled with VIPs and the rich and folks with connections. It’ll seem like a giant cocktail party in the Hamptons crammed with people too snooty to wear their caps backward or know how to properly execute a Bronx cheer. A good amount of people-watching will be confined to the box seats.
As for the players, they’ll give a good effort for their allotted inning or two and try to look their best, mindful that the nation is watching and that, for some, this will be their only chance or two to be in these games. They’ll say it’s an honor to put on the uniform, and the feeling will be genuine, but please don’t mistake this for a playoff game because the players sure won’t. Half the time, they’ll be busy getting each other’s autograph. You won’t see any chin music, or crafty managerial moves, and because Rose isn’t playing, no near-fatal examples of hustle.
Basically, the players in this game will be tantamount to walking museum pieces, to be fawned over and gushed upon. It’s an All-Star Game: all stars, all hype.
None of them will be dead in a few months, unlike the Stadium, the only reason to place special emphasis on this game, and the only reason to distinguish it from the others.
The Stadium is being serenaded here in the final months, and the sentimentality is only partially misplaced. To be honest, the place is a dump, compared with the chic new stadiums in other cities. There are no gimmicks or bells and whistles. The food will have you running to McDonald’s and there are probably more bathrooms in your house than at the Stadium. Plus, the charm died with the original building.
Yet, there’s still plenty of history, the flame that keeps baseball alive, which can’t be matched anywhere else. After this year, the All-Star Game will move on to other places with $8 gourmet hot dogs and swimming pools behind the outfield wall and gizmos going off whenever a homer lands in the seats.
What you won’t find there is nostalgia. Reggie Jackson never hit three home runs on three swings in those parks.
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