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.
Wilyer Abreu watched the ball leave the park and tossed his bat high in the air. His Venezuela teammates streamed out of the dugout in celebration. The comeback was on and the win over the reigning World Baseball Classic (WBC) champion Japan was within reach. Japan, their 11-game WBC winning streak on the line, held a 5-4 lead in the sixth inning of Saturday’s thrilling quarter-final matchup when Abreu put his team ahead with the biggest swing of the game: a three-run shot off Hiromi Itoh that sent the loanDepot Park crowd into a passionate roar and helped seize Venezuela’s 8-5
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