PlayStation or real life, Dunn can hit it a mile

By Kirby Arnold

Herald Writer

SEATTLE – If this were a video game, then Adam Dunn’s long home run would have cleared the Hit it Here Cafe with about a mile to spare.

Dunn, a self-professed expert at baseball on his Sony PlayStation, showed Sunday at Safeco Field that he’s just as adept with a bat as he is with a game controller.

The slugger with Class AAA Louisville of the Reds organization crushed a towering 409-foot home run off the cafe windows near the right-field foul pole, the longest of three home runs that powered the United States team to a 5-1 victory over the World in the All-Star Futures game.

“I hit it pretty good,” said Dunn, a second-round draft choice in 1998. “All I heard was how the ball doesn’t carry here. It carried pretty good today.”

Dunn flexed the most muscle on a day when almost all the scoring came by home runs.

Toby Hall, a Tacoma native who is on an offensive tear at Class AAA Durham (of the Devil Rays), homered in the fourth inning and also had a second-inning single. He won the game’s Most Valuable Player honor.

Chase Utley, a former UCLA All-American who was the Phillies’ first-round pick last year, drove in a run with a second-inning single and homered off the top of the right-field wall in the fourth.

Wilson Betemit (Braves) went 2-for-3 and hit a solo homer in the sixth inning for the World team’s only run.

There has been considerable speculation that Dunn, a 6-foot-6, 240-pound outfielder who turned down a scholarship offer to play quarterback at the University of Texas, will wind up with the Reds before the season is finished.

“If I think about that, I’ll go 0 for my next 100,” he said. “I really don’t think about it that much.”

Except, he was asked, when reporters mention it to him almost every night?

“Every night I talk to someone about PlayStation, but it doesn’t mean I think about it all the time,” Dunn said.

It does mean, however, that he’s good at PlayStation.

“If it was that, I’d have been called up a long time ago,” Dunn said.

Hall was born in Tacoma but moved away when he was a year old. His father was in the military, and Hall spent most of his life growing up in Sacramento, Calif.

To go 2-for-3 with a home run made for a special day back in his native territory.

“I’ve always grown up and known where I was born and what state,” Hall said. “I’ve been a Mariners fan. To be able to come here in the new stadium, it was a good feeling.”