oments historical and hysterical.
The All-Star Game has provided some of both, and the latter brings to mind the Big Unit, Randy Johnson, who formed part of two impromptu comedy acts, the first with John Kruk in 1993, and the second with Larry Walker four years later.
Act 1 took place at Baltimore's Camden Yards, where Seattle ace Johnson threw two hitless innings during a 9-3 American League victory. But it was the Johnson-Kruk act that stole the show after the 6-foot-10-inch Johnson's first pitch to the Phillies first baseman sailed over the batter's head to the backstop.
Kruk had no stomach for any more 100 mile-per-hour fastballs anywhere near the batter's box. He swung weakly at the next three pitches, and after the third futile swing, he never looked back. Kruk took one big stride as he swung and missed, and continued walking to the dugout.
In Act 2, the Johnson-Walker duo at Jacobs Field brought back memories of Johnson-Kruk. In a game in which the American League was again victorious, 3-1, Johnson, the AL starter, threw two hitless innings. And when he faced Rockies right fielder and former teammate Walker, it was deja vu - his first pitch in the lefty-vs.-lefty confrontation went right over Walker's head.
That was enough for Walker.
He put his batting helmet on backward and stepped across the plate to bat righthanded. He then took another pitch (a ball) before returning to the left side and drawing a walk without taking the bat off his shoulder.
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Being blown away by a pitcher is one thing, but a pitcher being blown off the mound?
It happened at the 1961 classic at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and it enabled the Americans to tie the game in the ninth inning before losing to the Nationals in the 10th, 5-4. The AL trailed, 3-1, in the ninth and had a rally going. Stu Miller, a hometown hero, was called in from the bullpen to stem the tide. That's when the gale force winds actually caused Miller to lose his balance, fall away from the mound, and balk, which advanced two runners to second and third. The next batter, Cleveland's Rocky Colavito, hit a ground ball that scored the tying run. One could say it was the first blown save in All-Star history.
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Washington Senators pitcher Dean Stone was credited with the easiest All-Star Game victory ever. He did it without throwing a pitch in 1954 at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium. Stone came into the game in the eighth inning after a two-run homer by Reds pinch hitter Gus Bell had given the NL a 9-8 lead. There were two outs and the Cardinals' Red Schoendienst on third base when Stone walked to the mound in relief of the White Sox' Bob Keegan. But before Stone threw his first pitch, Schoendienst broke for home and was tagged out. The AL came back to win, 11-9, and Stone, who played one uneventful season with the Red Sox three years later, got the W.
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Former Red Sox two-time ''Fireman of the Year'' Dick Radatz may be remembered by some as the man who gave up a two-out, three-run homer to the Phillies' Johnny Callison in the bottom of the ninth at Shea Stadium in 1964 that enabled the NL to win, 7-4, but in both the 1963 and '64 All-Star Games, Radatz still showed the National Leaguers why he was affectionately called ''The Monster'' by Boston fans.
Radatz struck out 10 batters, five in each game, in just 4 2/3 total innings. In the '63 game, his strikeout victims included Willie Mays and Duke Snider. During his brief Red Sox career (1962-66), the 6-foot-6-inch, 250-pound reliever had a 49-34 record with a league-leading 62 appearances and 24 saves in his rookie season and a league-best 29 saves in 1964. Radatz's Boston numbers also included 286 relief appearances, 556 innings pitched, and 617 strikeouts. His 16 relief victories in 1964 is a Red Sox record and his 79 appearances in 1964 is second best (to Greg Harris's 80) on Boston's all-time list.
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Radatz may have stuffed a few fastballs by some future Hall of Famers, but it was stuffing of another kind, at the All-Star ballot box by Cincinnati Reds fans in 1956 and 1957, that temporarily took the All-Star Game voting out of the hands of the fans. In '56, the National League starting lineup included the Reds' Johnny Temple (2B), Frank Robinson (LF), Gus Bell (CF), Ed Bailey (C) and Roy McMillan (SS). Bell was selected as a starter over Giants great Mays while Bailey got the nod over Dodgers slugger Roy Campanella.
The next year, there were five Reds in the starting lineup again - Temple, Bailey, Robinson, McMillan, and Don Hoak (3B), who was chosen over the Braves' Eddie Mathews. In fact, the ballot box stuffing resulted in Reds players voted in as starters at every position but first base, which so incensed commissioner Ford Frick that he removed two Cincinnati players from the starting lineup. Oh yes, the next year, in the 1958 game at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, not a single Cincinnati player appeared in the box score.
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Was there ever a better All-Star debut by a pitcher than that of the Red Sox' Roger Clemens at the Astrodome in 1986? Nine batters faced starter Clemens in three innings and it was nine up, nine down. Clemens threw 21 strikes and just three balls, was named the game's MVP and got the win in a 3-2 American League victory in his home state. But the '86 game was a historic occasion as well for the Dodgers' Fernando Valenzuela, who tied Carl Hubbell's record with five consecutive strikeouts in the fourth and fifth innings (New York's Don Mattingly, Baltimore's Cal Ripken, Toronto's Jesse Barfield, Detroit's Lou Whitaker, and Milwaukee's Teddy Higuera).
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Two years earlier, Valenzuela and the Mets' Dwight Gooden - who, at 19, was the youngest player in All-Star history - set a multi-pitcher record with six straight All-Star K's. In the fourth, Valenzuela punched out sluggers Dave Winfield (New York), Reggie Jackson (California), and George Brett (Kansas City). Gooden, in the fifth, then struck out Lance Parrish (Detroit), Chet Lemon (Detroit), and fellow rookie Alvin Davis (Seattle). It was a game of memorable pitching as Oakland's Bill Caudill also struck out three batters in a row: Tim Raines (Montreal), National League MVP Ryne Sandberg (Chicago), and Keith Hernandez (New York).
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It was the midseason strike year of 1981 and the All-Star Game was delayed until August. But if the fans were angry at the players, it didn't show at the box office at Cleveland's Municipal Stadium, where an All-Star-record crowd of 72,000-plus showed up to see the Nationals win for the 10th consecutive time (5-4). The Mets' Gary Carter stroked a pair of homers, the second of which brought the National League back to within a run, and then the Phillies' Mike Schmidt erased a 4-2 AL lead when he hit a two-run shot in the eighth off Rollie Fingers of the Brewers. Fifty-six players got into the game, an All-Star record.
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There was also some history made by former Red Sox outfielder Fred Lynn at Comiskey Park in Chicago, when the All-Star Game celebrated its 50th anniversary in the park where it all began. On July 6, 1983, Lynn, then a member of the California Angels, cranked out his fourth All-Star Game home run - and the first grand slam in history. It came in the bottom of the third off San Francisco's Atlee Hammaker, capping a seven-run inning that gave the AL a 9-1 lead en route to a 13-3 victory. It was just the second win in 21 All-Star Games for the AL, which got three perfect innings and four strikeouts from starter Dave Stieb of Toronto. The AL's six hits and seven runs in one inning was an All-Star record and also included a homer by Boston's Jim Rice. All of which led to another record - the biggest margin of victory in the game's history.
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Hall of Famer Lefty Gomez was a familiar face on All-Star Game programs from 1933-38 when he started for the American League five times (he didn't appear in 1936 in Boston) and wound up with two wins (the first game in 1933 in Chicago and in 1937 in Washington) and a loss (1938 in Cincinnati). The Yankee Hall of Famer pitched 18 All-Star innings, giving up only 11 hits and five earned runs, while striking out nine and walking three. Gomez's streak of consecutive starts was interrupted by another ''lefty,'' Boston's Lefty Grove, the starter and loser in the '36 game in Boston.
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His name was Max West, an outfielder for the National League's Boston Bees and the starting right fielder for the senior circuit in the 1940 All-Star Game at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, home of the long-since-gone St. Louis Browns of the American League. West, who would hit a team-best 12 homers for the sorry, 65-87 seventh-place (out of eight teams) Bees, managed by Casey Stengel, had just one at-bat in an All-Star game, but it was a memorable one.
West homered off the Yankees' Red Ruffing before an out was made in the first inning of the '40 game. The three-run blast was all the Nationals needed en route to a 4-0 victory. West's appearance was brief. In the second inning, he crashed into the right-field wall trying to field Luke Appling's line drive and had to leave the game. His injury was not serious. Not bad - one All-Star at-bat, one game-winning homer for the native of Dexter, Mo., who hit just .254 in seven major league seasons with 77 homers.
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The outbreak of World War II and the weather had an impact on the 1942 All-Star Game, originally scheduled for Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, but moved to the more spacious Polo Grounds in New York City because the game's proceeds were to go to war charities. The 6 p.m. game had problems even before the first pitch thrown by the Cardinals' Mort Cooper, who wound up the loser in the 3-1 AL victory. There were rain showers in the afternoon and then a more torrential downpour came just before game time, holding attendance down to 34,178. It was a strange day in the Big Apple: The only run by the home team came off the bat of Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen, who came up as a pinch hitter in the eighth and hit a home run. Ironically, he didn't hit a home run in 133 regular-season games that year.
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Sometimes, you don't need a lot of hits to win an All-Star Game. The National League had just three in 1993 at Texas, the biggest an eighth-inning homer by the Marlins' Jeff Conine off loser Steve Ontiveros of Oakland that broke a 2-2 tie and gave the Nationals a 3-2 victory. It was a frustrating defeat for the American League, which took a 2-0 lead, only to see all the NL hits leave the park. The others were by the Dodgers' Mike Piazza and the Astros' Craig Biggio, making a winner of Phillies pitcher Heathcliff Slocumb, who struck out two batters in an inning of work.
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And sometimes you need a lot of time to finish the job: While 1967 may be remembered by New Englanders as the year of the Impossible Dream Red Sox team, it's also the year it took 15 innings for the National League to dispatch the American League, 2-1, at Anaheim, setting an All-Star Game record for most innings. Home runs accounted for all the scoring as Philadelphia's Dick Allen hit one in the second, Baltimore's Brooks Robinson lauched one in the sixth, and then, finally, Cincinnati's Tony Perez made a loser of KC hurler Catfish Hunter when he turned on an 0-1 fastball. Twelve pitchers accounted for 30 strikeouts, with the Cubs' Ferguson Jenkins leading all hurlers with 6 K's. Carl Yastrzemski, on his way to an MVP and Triple Crown season with the Red Sox, had three hits and reached base five times.
