(Oops, didn’t realise I never hit “publish” on this post, which means it’s probably a day late and a dollar short… kind of like Manny not getting to the media conference, which I’m sure he was glad to pay $5000 to avoid. Anyway…)
Junior circuit represent! As usual, the AL helped the Sox secure home field advantage for the World Series (fingers crossed). Eight AL win in a row, by my count, excluding the infamous tie. I don’t think it means anything, really, in terms of overall AL superiority, although the AL is 6-3 in World Series in that same period. Still, for 2005, I’d say the weakest all-stars were on the NL side - David Eckstein and Luis Castillo come to mind.
Right now, I think the AL is stacked with power at the traditional defensive positions such as catcher, shortstop, second base - take Jason Varitek, Miguel Tejada, and Brian Roberts/Alfonso Soriana for example - in a way the NL isn’t. Whereas the NL really has a lot of the good first basemen (Derrek Lee and Albert Pujols are quite a step above Teixeira).
As for the game itself - that Tejada homer in the second inning was monstrous. And Rivera always gets the save. One thing about the All-Star game, there’s a lot of playing out of position - the outfielders vote means corner outfielders such as Ichiro and Scott Podsednik end up playing centre (though of course, both have the speed to play CF), while this game saw Morgan Ensberg, 3B, play first base and Shea Hillenbrand, 1B, return to that old 3B slot that he occupied in Boston. And listening to Mark Buehrle speak after his 2 innings, he sounded a lot like Boomhauer, Hank’s mumbling friend on “King of the Hill”.