When John Buck pushed a 3-2 pitch from Jonathan Broxton into right field, it looked like we had all the makings of a classic All-Star Game comeback. But Marlon Byrd played the ball on a hop, gunned it to second, and amazingly forced out David Ortiz, who had been forced to wait for the ball to drop to avoid getting doubled up off first. It may have cost the game--and home field advantage--for the American League, but Ortiz isn't going to lose any sleep over it:
"I was in the wrong place. It was the wrong time. And it was the wrong guy, too," Ortiz said with a laugh.
"I saw how deep he was playing," Ortiz said. "I thought at first that he would catch the ball. But he didn't. He just got the ball to second base before me. I'm not that fast. That's the kind of thing that can happen in an All-Star Game."
And can you really blame Ortiz for laughing? After all, what is the All-Star game if not a joke? It decides home field advantage in the most important series of the year, and yet the teams are not allowed to play to win. The best players leave after a few innings because everyone needs to play and valuable roster spaces are taken up by pitchers considered ineligible, leaving benches needlessly depleted.
Even forgetting the issues in how teams are selected (Alex Rodriguez? Seriously?), and the fact that the World Series participants' players could contribute eight runs and four scoreless innings in a loss, just the way the game is played is insane for something so important. David Ortiz had little chance of avoiding the out on that bloop, but at the same time he shouldn't have been out there to begin with. Blame the game, not the player.