Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507130028
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAYSON STARK KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: ARLINGTON, TEXAS LENGTH: Long
But then those never-say-``Sayonara'' National League all-stars arose Tuesday night to win their second straight All-Star Game in very unlikely fashion.
They got three hits all night off seven American League pitchers. But all three of those hits were home runs.
And so - on a night when the National League had no singles, no doubles, no triples and nobody left on base - it somehow won anyhow, 3-2. That meant the Phillies' Heathcliff Slocumb was the winning pitcher. And it also meant the NL now has an actual two-game winning streak in the all-unimportant all-star standings, after having lost six in a row before that.
``The good thing about winning two in a row,'' said the NL's Tony Gwynn, ``is it keeps everybody off our back.''
After going a record 52/3 innings without getting any hits, the NL stars then got a sixth-inning homer by Craig Biggio, a seventh-inning blast by Mike Piazza and a game-winning pinch homer in the eighth by Jeff Conine - on the first pitch thrown all night by Oakland right-hander Steve Ontiveros. And that was that. Conine was named the game's MVP.
The NL tied the all-star record for fewest hits by a winning team - three. But that was set in the 1952 game in Philadelphia, which was rained out after five innings. So this was a definite feat.
Slocumb got the win with a pivotal seventh-inning performance in which he pitched out of a Carlos Perez mess by striking out Ivan Rodriguez and Jim Edmonds.
About two innings into the game, it looked as if the turning point might have come a week and a half ago. That, of course, was when the National League starting lineup was announced - and had way too many left-handed hitters.
So Tuesday night, that towering hulk of left-handed invincibility, Randy Johnson, took the mound and found three straight left-handed hitters coming to bat in the first inning, with Fred McGriff waiting in the No.5 hole.
Seeing as how Johnson had allowed three hits to left-handed hitters all season, that wasn't exactly an ideal matchup to kick off an all-star slugathon.
Asked the last time he'd faced that many left-handed hitters in one game, Johnson quipped: ``Maybe when I was in Little League.''
``I'll tell you who spoiled it for all us left-handers,'' the Padres' Gwynn said before the game. ``And that was [John] Kruk. Kruk killed it for us guys with that at-bat [in the '93 game]. Now people think nobody can get a hit off that guy.
``But I'm not scared. I told Lenny [Dykstra] that if he leads off with a single up the middle, that could open the floodgates. Of course, if he doesn't, it could be a long night.''
Well, Dykstra didn't. But he did reach base off Johnson with a walk, which was an achievement in itself. For a while, that was about it for the NL's offensive highlights.
Gwynn said his sole objective against Johnson was not to strike out - ``because I know if I do, when I turn on my VCR to watch the tape, they'll be saying, `He just struck out the guy who's the toughest guy in baseball to strike out.'''
So he took care of that problem by hacking at the first pitch and flying out. Then Johnson gave the NL one last thrill by running a 3-and-0 count on Barry Bonds. But it all disintegrated in a hurry after that.
First, Dykstra became the first man in the '90s to get thrown out stealing in an All-Star Game. Then Bonds struck out. And that was the last NL uprising that passed for a rally for a long, long time.
The Mariners' ace wound up ripping off two straight hitless innings, with three strikeouts. But his fellow starter, that Nomo fellow, wasn't too bad, either.
Nomo twisted. And turned. And stared back at the flagpoles. And then dominated the AL pretty much exactly the way he'd been overmatching the NL for 21/2 months. Two innings. One hit - a first-inning single by Cleveland's Carlos Baerga. Three whiffs. Been there. Done that.
It would have been fun if Johnson and Nomo could have just kept on firing all night - first man to 10 strikeouts wins. And Nomo's catcher, the Dodgers' Piazza, said even the players had been talking about that.
``Randy Myers said in the meeting, `Let's just let Nomo go nine and see what happens,''' Piazza said. ``It would be fun. But I don't think their team would go for it, though.''
So after two innings, Nomo and Johnson called it a night. And Kevin Appier and Dennis Martinez, the two pitchers who succeeded Johnson, picked up right where the tallest pitcher in history left off, mowing down the next 11 NL batters.
Meanwhile, in the fourth, Frank Thomas of the White Sox picked up where he'd left off in the Home-Run Derby the day before, by scrunching a two-run homer into the Hank Aaron superbox in left field. (It happened that the players' association had rented the box, and the ball ended up in the hands of Alex Fehr, 9, nephew of union head Donald Fehr.)
Cleveland's Martinez carried the AL no-hitter two outs into the sixth - the longest any team ever had carried one in an All-Star Game. The previous record was 51/3, by the NL staff in the 1961 game.
And just as baseball honchos were announcing that Harmon Killebrew broke up that no-hitter with a home run, Houston's Biggio promptly busted up this one with a solo home run. It was the first homer by an NL second baseman since Joe Morgan thumped one off Jim Palmer leading off the 1977 game.
Then, an inning later, Piazza became the first NL catcher to homer since Gary Carter in 1984. And we had ourselves a 2-2 tie - and some actual late-inning drama to carry this game home.
Keywords:
BASEBALL
by CNB