Anaheim Angels' star Garret Anderson edged the St. Louis Cardinals' Albert Pujols 9-8 Monday to win the All-Star Home Run Derby.
"I don't think of myself as a home-run hitter, but it was another platform to show America what I can do," Anderson said.
Tino Martinez, then with the New York Yankees, was the only other player from a defending World Series champion to win the derby, accomplishing the feat in 1997 at Cleveland's Jacobs Field.
PHOTO: AFP
Some of the drama was lacking this year.
Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa weren't among the eight players in the competition, which has become a highlight of the All-Star break.
And US Cellular Field, which used to be known as Comiskey Park, is among the most boring ballparks in baseball, with no natural targets such as the warehouse at Baltimore's Camden Yards or the Green Monster at Boston's Fenway Park.
Still, the crowd of 47,819 rose to its feet as Pujols, batting last, came up with one strike left. He stepped out and lined a pitch off the left-field warning track.
Pujols started slowly, hitting just four homers in the first round, which tied for third with Jim Edmonds and Gary Sheffield, trailing defending champion Jason Giambi (12) and Anderson (seven). Pujols advanced over Sheffield because he has more regular-season homers, 27-22.
In the semifinals, Anderson beat Edmonds 6-4 and Pujols defeated Giambi 14-11, hitting the longest shot of the night -- a 478-foot drive. Pujols' total tied for the most in a derby round, a mark set by Giambi two years ago at Seattle.
After lining a ball into left field for his final out in the semifinals, Giambi walked over to Pujols, exchanged hand slaps, and the pair gave each other an extended hug.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier