Where the Hell is the Air Force When You Need Them?

Dave Paisley

All during the All-Star Game, I was begging, nay, pleading for someone to stop the incessant droning. No, I'm not talking about Costas and Morgan, even though they managed to be as pompous and boring as they could be. I'm talking about the damned airplane that must have been circling the stadium for the entire game. We got a shot of it early in the telecast, and little did I know then that I'd be begging for a couple of heavily armed F-16s to take the b****** out by as early as the third inning. With Colorado being a big Air Force state, you'd have thought something could have been done.

Our only other hope was a McGwire moon shot somehow taking down the plane, but the nearest we got was a decent enough Barry Bonds home run that didn't even make the upper deck.

But enough about the peripheral distractions. With 31 hits in the game, how come only 3 of them were home runs? With all those dinky hits, it sure seemed like the game took longer than the 3:38 official time. I don't suppose a 13-8 score is a surprise for a game at Coors, but the lack of home runs was something of a shock, given all those hits.

The AL seemed determined to beat the NL at little ball right from the start, with Lofton and Alomar hustling like crazy against Maddux, but it didn't pay off early. David Wells was great for the AL, going two innings while giving up only one walk. Maddux escaped after two innings unscathed and seemed ecstatic to have made it that far. Tom Glavine relieved him and stranded runners at first and third in his first inning. The AL was foiled again.

The Costas blather began in earnest when Glavine came up to bat in the bottom of the third. Two guys on, nobody out, he and Morgan were amazed that Leyland lets Glavine bat. Perfect sacrifice situation, something Glavine excels at, probably more than most position players, and they just don't get it. Of course, Glavine lays down a perfect bunt at the first opportunity. Duh!

With Craig Biggio up next, he did what he does best - get hit by a pitch. If you can call it that. No attempt to move out of the way. The ball must have ticked a loose thread on his sleeve or something, because you sure couldn't see any impact. Maybe the ump has bionic hearing.

When the NL scored the first runs of the game on Gwynn's "hit" off Alomar's glove, the floodgates opened.

In the next inning Glavine did his best imitation of the Seattle bullpen, allowing slap hits, bloop hits and a Ripken blast. The "Coupe de Ville" for Glavine was walking Griffey with the bases loaded. Kevin Brown would come in as the only mid-inning replacement in the entire game, giving up a sac fly to Juan "RBI Vulture" Gonzalez and striking out Thome to end the inning. He would be the last NL pitcher to go unscored upon.

In the fourth inning, with Alex Rodriguez (earlier featured in a bizarre MLB ad, where he juices up several pieces of baseball paraphernalia) up to bat, the airplane was again droning prominently in the background. A-Rod did his best to bring it down, taking Andy Ashby deep, but he sliced the ball to the opposite field and didn't really get the nice, high trajectory one needs for anti-aircraft fire. Costas and Morgan may not have known the ball was going out, but Larry Walker in RF did, and I believe he knows Coors quite well.

At about this point in the game, NBC began hyping their coming decade of Olympics coverage. Yawn.

After Bartolo Colon was finished wetting his pants pitching against McGwire and Bonds, and gave up the lead on a 3-run dinger to Barry, he settled down a bit, ending the NL fourth by striking out Alou, resulting in the worst pun of the evening, by far, from Costas - "A Whiff of Colon"... Thanks, Bob, we needed that.

As if that wasn't enough, we got a real treat seeing Javy Lopez try to catch Ugueth (pronounced oo-GET) Urbina. Passed balls, wild pitches, double steals, we got it all. In fact Urbina's motto seemed to be "With me, oo-Get all kinds of free bases."

Sorry, I can't even blame Costas for that one.

[Side note to John Schuerholz: Don't ever trade for Ugueth Urbina. I don't think you can afford the therapy for Javy.]

After this inning, the AL had retaken the lead 8-6, never to look back.

About then we got another chance for NBC to promote yet another network-owned sport - this time, a preview of an upcoming match between two WNBA expansion franchises. Woohoo, already the WNBA is expanding! It seems that one of the teams is called the Washington Miss-sticks. Sure sounds like a ladies' hockey team to me.

From here to the end, the game just seemed to drag on. Maybe it's just me, but once the batting order has been destroyed, and it takes two pages on the scorecard, I have a hard time keeping up with the action and lose interest a little.

Like a train wreck in slow motion, the game finally rambled untidily to a close, highlighted by a couple of fabulous shortstop plays in the bottom of the eighth by Vizquel and the top of the ninth by Renteria.

At the end of the day, the AL won 13-8, but of the total of 31 hits, only 5 were for extra bases. Most strange.

Still, of all the sports, the MLB All-Star Game best embodies the spirit of the game itself. Unlike the NBA and NFL farces, the game can be played at close to real intensity. Ken Griffey Jr. facing Greg Maddux and Mark McGwire facing David Wells are genuinely enticing situations that made the first few innings great viewing, if not listening. A Sidewinder missile up the exhaust pipe of that airplane would have cheered me up no end, though. Maybe a second for the NBC booth?

Dave Paisley is the only reporter who doesn't ask Mark McGwire about Roger Maris on a daily basis. Unfortunately, this has gotten him branded "not a team player" by the rest of the media corps. Sympathize at drdjp@strikethree.com.