July 10, 2012 [LINK / comment]
As the rosters and starting lineups for the All-Star Game were introduced tonight, it was nice that both the newbie superstar Bryce Harper and aging future Hall-of-Famer Chipper Jones got warm rounds of applause. Kauffman Stadium sure is a beauty, especially when there is bright blue skies surrounding it. I wish they would put back some more grass slope around the waterfalls, and would cut out a row or two of box seats behind home plate, but otherwise, I don't think there's much they could do to improve it.
For fans who don't pay as much attention as they should to teams outside their immediate region, the All-Star Game is always a great help. The Angels' Mark Trumbo and rookie Mike Trout are both very impressive, which is why the Texas Rangers can't make postseason plans too far in advance. It looks like Mike Trout (AL) and Bryce Harper (NL) are shoo-ins for rookie of the year in their respective leagues.
Thanks to Joe Johnston for kindly reminding me that, contrary to what I wrote on this blog yesterday, an All-Star Game was indeed played in K.C. Municipal Stadium: one of the two All-Star Games that were played in 1960. Fortunately, I got it right on the text portion of that page.
Ryan Braun just hit an RBI double, giving the National League a 1-0 lead in the top of the first. Gotta go...
Detroit's portly Prince Fielder won the Home Run Derby last night, beating Jose Bautista 12 to 7 in the final round three. Mike Trumbo and Carlos Beltran wowed everybody in rounds one and two, but then faded. See MLB.com.
After the Home Run Derby got underway last night, it occurred to me that some fans might find this to be a handy tip for the purposes of estimating home run distances: Just go to Stadiums superimposed page, choose "distances" (at the bottom of the scrolling menu) for the Reference stadium (opaque / dark) and then your choice of Comparison stadium (translucent / pale). Voilà!
Doing such an image superimposition requires some clever tricks with CSS; I just hope those two images align properly in all browser platforms.