Kyle Schwarber was nervous. He had played in Game 7 of the MLB World Series and homered for the US in the World Baseball Classic (WBC), but he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off.
No one had.
“That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shoot-out,” Schwarber said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after a 6-6 tie on Tuesday in which they wasted a six-run, seventh-inning lead.
Photo: EPA
Schwarber earned the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award, going zero for two with a walk as the NL won for the second time in their past 12 tries. He became the first non-pitcher MVP without a hit.
“It will be interesting to see where that goes,” AL manager Aaron Boone said. “There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular-season mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that.”
Concerned about running out of pitchers in an era where no All-Star throws more than one inning, MLB and the players’ association made the change in 2022.
Photo: AFP
In the MLB’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shoot-out, the game was decided by having three batters from each league take three swings each off coaches.
Boone picked Brent Rooker, Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Eugenio Suarez, Schwarber and Pete Alonso for the NL. Because Suarez was hit on the left hand by a fastball in the eighth inning, the NL turned to their alternate, Kyle Stowers.
Players from both teams stood outside their dugouts, some already in street clothes, jumping and shouting after each long ball from their side. Yankees coach Travis Chapman threw to the AL batters and Dodgers coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.
Photo: AFP
Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and Stowers hit one. Randy Arozarena boosted the AL lead to 3-1.
Ebel had thrown batting practice to Schwarber two years ago at the WBC.
“He asked me right before, he was like: ‘Where do you want it?’” Schwarber said. “I’m like, just middle. And he’s like: ‘I gotcha.’”
He took two pitches and deposited the third just over the center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a drive over the right-center bullpen. After letting two more go by, he dropped to a knee while pulling the third, craned his neck and held his bat it the air as the ball landed in the fourth row of the Chop House seats.
“I didn’t hit it, obviously, my best, but I was thinking I got enough of it,” Schwarber said. “And I was just kind of down there, hoping, saying: ‘Go, go, go.’ And it went. And it was awesome.”
Aranda followed with a fly well short of the center-field warning track, drove a pitch just shy of the top of the right-field wall and hit an opposite-field pop that dropped in medium left.
Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, did not have to bat and patted Schwarber on the head as fireworks went off at Truist Field.
“I felt like a closer like a closer going into a game,” Alonso said, “and then it’s like: ‘Wait, the guy in the field got a double play to end the inning. You’re not going in.’”
MLB, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, said in 2022 that All-Star Games ending in a swing-off would be listed as tied, with a notation of the game being decided in a swing-off. MLB’s official post-game notes listed Tuesday’s outcome as a 7-6 NL victory.
Earlier, Ketel Marte’s two-run double in the first had put the NL ahead, while Alonso’s three-run homer off Kris Bubic and Corbin Carroll’s solo shot against Casey Mize opened a 6-0 lead in the sixth inning.
The AL comeback began when Rooker hit a three-run pinch homer against Randy Rodriguez in a four-run seventh that included Bobby Witt Jr’s RBI groundout. Robert Suarez allowed consecutive doubles to Byron Buxton and Witt with one out in ninth, and Steven Kwan’s infield hit on a three-hopper to third off Edwin Diaz drove in the tying run.
Carlos Alcaraz on Sunday fought through a second-set slump to post a roller-coaster 6-1, 2-6, 6-3 victory over Damir Dzumhur in his opening match at the Cincinnati Open. The Spaniard, playing his first tournament since losing to Jannik Sinner in the Wimbledon final, raced through the first set, but completely lost his way in the second, dropping his serve twice against the 33-year-old Bosnian. Alcaraz regained his intensity and cut down his errors in the third set as a seventh ace took him to a match point that was converted when Dzumhur fired wide. “It was just a roller coaster,” said the second
Taiwan’s men’s basketball team on Monday clinched a spot in the FIBA Asia Cup quarter-finals with a 78-64 win over Jordan in Saudi Arabia, securing their best finish in the tournament since placing fourth in 2013. The win was sweet revenge for Taiwan, who were denied a quarter-final spot by Jordan at the same stage of the previous Asia Cup in 2022 after blowing a nine-point lead in the final minute and losing 97-96 on a half-court buzzer-beater. “History is part of the journey,” Taiwan head coach Gianluca Tucci said when asked about the 2022 collapse of the team, who he did
NEXT ROUND: World No. 1s Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka opened their title defenses with straight-sets wins, while Iga Swiatek and Taylor Fritz also advanced Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka got their title defenses off to smooth starts as they powered into the third round of the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Open on Saturday. The men’s and women’s top seeds, each ranked No. 1 in the world, were both competing for the first time since Wimbledon, where Sinner lifted the title and Sabalenka bowed out in the women’s semi-finals. Sinner crushed Colombian Daniel Elahi Galan 6-1, 6-1 in steamy afternoon weather, while Sabalenka beat 2023 Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova 7-5, 6-1 under the lights of the night session. Sabalenka needed 54 minutes and a service break in the final game
Defending champions Jannik Sinner and Aryna Sabalenka on Wednesday led the way into the Cincinnati Open quarter-finals, with Carlos Alcaraz hot on their heels after a straight-sets victory of his own. Sinner shrugged off a mid-match weather delay lasting nearly three hours as he advanced 6-4, 7-6 (7/4) over Adrian Mannarino. Alcaraz, the second seed who has reached the final in his past six tournaments, hammered Italian lucky loser Luca Nardi 6-1, 6-4. After sweeping the opening set in 28 minutes, Alcaraz hit a speed bump, dropping his serve to trail 2-4. He promptly regained the break, then fought through a marathon ninth game
RSS