July 17, 2003 [LINK]
It really DID count!
Holy cow! This year's All-Star game was one for the record books. As Thomas Bowell wrote in today's Washington Post,
Seldom does a sport stumble into such a bonanza. On Tuesday night, baseball desperately needed a good game to justify a radical format switch, with the winner getting home-field advantage in the World Series. Instead, the sport saw the biggest come-from-behind win since '55 and perhaps the best game since Ted Williams's walk-off home run in '41. The main reason was Scioscia.
True, but without Blalock's home run that historic twist of fate wouldn't have happened. Hopefully this will generate increased TV viewership for next year, and possibly for this year's postseason. Dare we hope that baseball is back on track? The following excerpt from Commissioner Selig's online chat before the game certainly isn't very encouraging:
Bill from Washington, D.C.: When will MLB be back in the nation's capital?
Well, that's a fair question coming from you. We have a relocation committee that is studying all of the aspects of the Montreal club. It's in the last residue of contraction. We have worked out ... the Puerto Rican experiment has been a wonderful experiment. Frank Robinson has told me that the players enjoyed it and he's enjoyed it. I feel really good about that experiment, but, we need to seriously consider what we do with the Montreal club. The relocation committee has been involved in a lot of work. They will continue to be. We have not set a timetable but I'm sure we will be discussing the matter a lot during the rest of this summer.