Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 9, 1995 TAG: 9507100048
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: E1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEVIN SHERRINGTON DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DATELINE: ARLINGTON, TEXAS LENGTH: Long
Mickey Vernon played in seven All-Star Games, he corrected a caller, not six. He didn't seem hopeful about recalling much. But, as he peeled back his 77 years, he came up with the seasons, sites, pitchers, even the pitches.
He needed only a couple of nudges, one in reference to his 1953 All-Star appearance.
``Which war was that,'' the old first baseman asked, searching for a reference point, ``the Korean?''
The National League's 1953 combo of Harvey Haddix and Del Crandall apparently made more of an impression on Vernon than the rather formidable U.S.battery of Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur. For many baseball fans, the story's the same.
The All-Star Game has sparkled in the public's imagination since it originated in Chicago in 1933, meant as a one-time civic promotion by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward. Babe Ruth christened it that year with a home run. The next year, its legend grew when Carl Hubbell struck out Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin, all in a row.
Over the next half-century and more, individual achievements would dominate it: a 20-year-old Bob Feller pitching 32/3 innings in 1939 and telling a reporter years later, in typical Feller bravado, ``I was never nervous on a pitching mound.'' ... Al Rosen hitting two home runs despite a broken finger in 1954. ... Stan Musial telling catcher Yogi Berra he was ``getting tired,'' before stepping into the batter's box in 1955, then hitting a home run to give the NL a 6-5 victory in 12 innings. ... Willie Mays robbing Roger Maris of a home run in 1962, or making a half-dozen similar grabs in other years. The World Series belonged to Mickey Mantle, but the All-Star Games were a great green stage for Mays, who hit .307 in 24 appearances.
Some promising talent flamed out much sooner. In 1984, 23-year-old Fernando Valenzuela and 19-year-old Dwight Gooden combined to strike out six consecutive AL batters. Two years later, Valenzuela tied Hubbell's record of five straight.
By 1988, Valenzuela's left arm was used up. Gooden's Hall-of-Fame career was ruined by drugs and alcohol.
No other exhibition in any sport has produced as many memorable characters or moments as baseball's All-Star Game.
Find someone who can name the leading scorer from last year's NBA All-Star Game or the winning team from the NFL Pro Bowl. Is either conference on a winning streak in Honolulu?
Does anyone care?
The NL's dominance of the mid-season All-Star Game once was a source of embarrassment to the American League.
``You wanted in the worst way to kick their [expletive],'' former Cleveland Indians pitcher Sam McDowell said.
Winning was all he was thinking in 1970, Pete Rose said, when he thundered around third and saw catcher Ray Fosse up the base line.
The All-Stars have played as if it were their last game. For some, in effect, it was. Fosse never was the same after Rose smashed into him, breaking Fosse's collar bone and separating his shoulder. After Earl Averill's line drive caromed off Dizzy Dean's toe in 1937, the 26-year-old Dean's best years were behind him.
How much does the game mean to the players? After Ted Williams' three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth gave the AL a 7-5 victory in 1941, he said he had ``never been so happy.''
``Halfway down to first,'' Williams said after the game, ``seeing that ball going out, I stopped running and started leaping and jumping and clapping my hands, and I was so happy I laughed out loud.''
Laughed out loud? Ted Williams?
Williams apparently got a kick out of being an All-Star. Before the 1946 game, he practically begged Pittsburgh's Rip Sewell not to throw his blooper or ``Ephus'' pitch. Williams considered the gimmick pitch a travesty for a game of such magnitude.
Sewell not only threw it, he signaled it was coming. He told baseball author Donald Honig he did it while trying to liven up a game led by the AL, 9-0. Williams got three bloopers from Sewell. On the last, Williams shuffled forward in the box - ``which was the right way to attack that pitch, incidentally,'' Sewell said - and nearly hit it out of Boston.
``Well, the fans stood up, and they went crazy,'' Sewell said. ``I walked around the base lines with Ted, talking to him. He was laughing all the way around. I got a standing ovation when I walked off the mound after that inning.
``We'd turned a dead turkey of a ballgame into a real crowd pleaser.''
The fans didn't need much encouragement. Occasionally, the devotion exceeds all rationale. In 1957, Commissioner Ford Frick stepped in when the city of Cincinnati elected Reds second baseman Johnny Temple, shortstop Roy McMillan, third baseman Don Hoak, catcher Ed Bailey and outfielders Gus Bell, Wally Post and Frank Robinson to the starting lineup.
George Crowe, Cincinnati's first baseman, must have wondered what he did wrong.
Frick removed Bell and Post from the starting lineup. And, beginning the next season, the All-Star vote went to the players, managers and coaches until 1970, when Commissioner Bowie Kuhn returned it to the fans.
The game became so popular that, from 1959 through 1962, officials took a tip from Ernie Banks and played two. The most memorable moment of those years may have been 1961, when 5-foot-10, 165-pound Giants' pitcher Stu Miller took the mound in Candlestick Park.
Only in its second season, ``the Stick'' already had a reputation as a blustery joint. The game was calm until the late innings, as the winds started whipping off the bay.
``The uniforms were bigger then and a lot more baggy,'' said Vernon, who was in the first-base coaching box when Miller entered the game in the eighth. ``My pants were just flapping around, it was blowin' so hard.''
In the middle of Miller's first pitch to Rocky Colavito, the wind caught the Giants' pitcher like a sail and, as Vernon recalled, ``moved him right off the mound.''
The umpires called a balk. The runners moved to second and third, setting off a chain of errors that nearly cost the NL the game. Miller's teammates rallied in the 10th, however, and he got the victory.
The AL blew plenty of chances on its own. From 1963 through 1982, it won once. The defining moment may have come in 1970, at Cincinnati's new Riverfront Stadium.
With two outs in the bottom of the 12th, Rose singled. Two hits later, he rounded third, racing the throw home from center fielder Amos Otis.
Fosse, concentrating on the ball, said he had no idea Rose was about to unload on him. A mistake made by reporters since was that he lost the ball upon impact. He never touched it, he said. In some replays, pitcher Clyde Wright can be seen backing up the play. He told Fosse later that he caught the throw from Otis on a hop.
Rose hit him so hard it dislodged Fosse's glove and left him in a dazed heap. After the game, Rose said he considered a head-first slide but thought better of it because he believed the throw would beat him.
``I knew I had to score,'' he said. ``I didn't care about hurting myself if we could win.''
The NL won, 5-4. The next day, X-rays showed nothing wrong. Fosse, 23, played in 120 games for Cleveland that season and hit .307, a career high. But more X-rays the next spring showed a break as well as a separation. Baseball officials said Fosse's mechanics went bad as he tried to compensate for the pain and restricted motion in his shoulder. He played nine more years but never in more than 90 games in a season after 1973.
He retired after 1979 with a career batting average of .256.
``I've never seen a catcher with more tools than he had,'' said McDowell, a teammate on the Indians as well as the 1970 All-Stars. ``If given enough time, he might have been as good or even better than Johnny Bench.
``What occurred in that game, regardless of what Ray says, ruined his career. Period.''
McDowell, a friend of Rose's, was standing on the top step of the dugout as the play at the plate developed. He said he knew Rose would hit him.
``Was he really trying to hurt him?'' McDowell asked. ``No.''
Fosse used to defend Rose, too. He had only two conversations with Rose about the collision. Both times, he said Rose told him he was trying to avoid him.
``Then he was quoted in his book saying that he did it on purpose, that his dad would have been disappointed in him if he hadn't,'' said Fosse, now an Oakland Athletics broadcaster. ``If there's anything upsetting about it, that's it.
``I was up the line and in the basepath, but I was reaching for the ball. It was really uncalled for.''
But it was an All-Star moment a generation would recall above all others. Others might remember the 1940 game, when anonymous Max West hit a home run in the only All-Star at-bat of his career; or 1938, when Leo Durocher bunted for a single and scored on the same play.
Maybe fans would point to Fred Lynn hitting the first grand slam in All-Star history in 1983, the year the AL finally broke the NL's winning streak. AL players remember.
The game may not count in the standings, but it does with the players, McDowell said.
And that makes all the difference.
``No matter how tired you were, no matter how focused you were on the season,'' said McDowell, a four-time All-Star, ``you'd get pumped up two or three hours before the game, seeing all those guys standing around you. You just wanted to beat 'em, because that's how you gain respect.''
by CNB