There was even a moment straight out of the Charles Steinberg catalog: The Village People popped out of the home dugout before the seventh to lead the crowd in a round of "YMCA," though that slice of kitsch was quickly forgotten in the wake of Josh Groban's moving rendition of "God Bless America."
But for much of the night, a Bronx crowd of 55,632 was presented with an uncomfortable quandary, one that designated villain Jonathan Papelbon probably imagined wasn't much of a choice at all, at least not for the loudmouths who made his New York experience rude, crude, and lewd.
Root for a team filled with Red Sox uniforms, beginning with the manager, or throw your lot behind the National League All-Stars, a team so feeble for so long, it was impossible to work up a good hate.
But as ugly as the night was for Papelbon, by the end of last night's marathon no one was squirming more than the commissioner, Bud Selig, who was faced with the nightmare scenario of another All-Star Game in which the teams ran out of pitchers. That happened the last time the game went into extra innings, in 2002 in Milwaukee's Miller Park, when an apopleptic Selig was forced to declare the game a 7-all tie after 11 innings.
With both teams down to their last pitcher, Selig was spared a repeat of that embarassment when Michael Young's bases-loaded sacrifice fly off Philadelphia's Brad Lidge scored Minnesota's Justin Morneau with the winning run. The game ended at 1:37 a.m.; at 4 hours 50 minutes, it was the longest by time in All-Star history, and matched the 15-inning, 2-1 NL win in 1967 for longest by innings.
The NL had won all nine previous games that had gone to extra innings before the '02 tie but could not avoid extending its winless streak to 12 games (11 losses and a tie), despite an extraordinary tight-wire act by Rockies pitcher Aaron Cook, who had 11 runners on base in three innings (10th through 12th) but did not allow a run.
