Four Bases the Hard Way

You might say I called it.

The moment Ichiro Suzuki, the eventual MVP of the 2007 All-Star Game, struck the Chris Young pitch towards right field, I instantly knew it was a home run. After all, the ball came off his bat in screaming line-drive fashion, something the NL's right fielder and former Seattle star, Ken Griffey, Jr., might have swung on and belted, as Seattle's local radio announcer Dave Niehaus loves to say.

However, AT&T Park in San Francisco is far from generous in regards to home runs, especially to cavernous right field, where the territory is deep and the wall is 20 feet high just for good measure. What may have been easily into the fifth row in Camden Yards was well short of a goner here by the Bay.

In a freak occurrence, though, the pageantry of the Midsummer Classic played a crucial role in the game's outcome and perhaps ownership of homefield in the 2007 World Series. Flimsy, floppy white decorative banners featuring generic ballplayers in action adorned the lower part of the right field wall. Instead of taking a true bounce off the wall back towards right center field, where Griffey had anticipated, it took a lazy, unnatural right turn after glancing off the banner, much like a bounce off the Metrodome's "big hefty bag" wall in right would have. For anyone else in baseball, this meant a triple. But this was Ichiro, quite possibly the fastest baserunner the game has ever seen.

How many inside-the-park home runs have you ever seen where the runner comfortably pulled up and cruised into home plate without a relay throw on his heels? Griffey's miscue in right was far from egregious, and his throwing arm far from mediocre. And yet, Ichiro could have easily rounded home and been safe at first if the game allowed. Either way, the Japanese prodigy fittingly seized back the home run the ballpark had taken away from him. More importantly, the home run scored Brian Roberts as well and gave the American League their first lead at 2-1 in the fifth inning.

What else did this play do? Well, for starters, it showed Alex Rodriguez how to run the bases like a real ballplayer, as the Yankees slugger had been caught awkwardly scuttling into catcher Russell Martin's tag in the previous inning while trying to score from second base. Not exactly Pete Rose running into Ray Fosse. Rodriguez looked surprisingly slow rounding third and made no attempt at a slide to avoid the tag when the throw from Griffey Jr. beat A-Rod home. The throw beat the normally-speedy third baseman (in his defense, he was cramped by a questionable hamstring injury, however he had just stolen second base on the play prior) to the plate by several strides. Ichiro still would have beaten it, though.

The inside-the-park job also capped a 3-for-3 night for the Mariners star, as he had reached on a ground single up the middle and an opposite field poke on a tough low and away pitch that fell neatly into shallow left. While Suzuki was not accountable for the game-winner, that honor went to Victor Martinez, whose two run homer in the eighth inning appeared to be simply an insurance blast at the time, it did allow the AL to seize the game's momentum along with their first lead. Oh, and it was the first of its kind in All-Star Game history.

What? This is a game that has been played annually since 1933, sometimes twice a year, through hitters and pitchers eras alike, through unruly, cavernous ballparks of the distant past like the Polo Grounds, and speedy five-tool players not always dependent on the longball. Long before games like Home Run Derby were created to entertain infatuated fans, the inside-the-park home run was a regular part of the game. And yet, no all-star was ever worthy of such a feat, for whatever reason. Not until 2007, were we able to see a running four-bagger in an All-Star Game, and even then, it had to be imported express from Japan.

Ichiro's feat, however extraordinary, was nearly reduced to footnote status in the bizarre and suspenseful (well, as suspenseful as an All-Star Game can get, anyway) bottom of the ninth. After Orioles' second baseman Brian Roberts muffed a routine ground ball, allowing Dmitri Young to reach base with two outs and no one on, Alfonso Soriano launched an opposite field shot to suddenly cut a safe three-run AL lead to one and cause a state of panic. Mariner closer J.J. Putz sure felt it, as he walked his initials counterpart, J.J. Hardy. Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez felt it, as he walked Derrek Lee and then Orlando Hudson to load the bases for Aaron Rowand and a dramatic final confrontation.

The National League lost this game perhaps because NL manager Tony LaRussa inexplicably, mind-numbingly, refused to play his best player, his own player, Albert Pujols, throughout the game, and even in the ninth. Instead, he allowed the likes of J.J. Hardy, Derrek Lee, Orlando Hudson, and Aaron Rowand to bat in clutch spots while No. 5 in red remained seated. It is thanks to LaRussa, a manager well-known for outsmarting himself with unconventional and obsessive strategy, that K-Rod was able to collect himself and induce Rowand's easy fly out to Alex Rios in right field. Thus, Ichiro's Sonic-the-Hedgehog-style home run, and not Pujols' homer or even line single in dramatic circumstances, is what stands out in the 2007 Midsummer Classic.

And I knew it ... I mean he, was gone as soon as he hit it.