Share your favorite All-Star moment
What will be your lasting impression from All-Star week in St. Louis? Here are a few from our writers, feel free to share your own in the comments field:
My lasting impression is that this is the best baseball town in America. I knew it before, but the outpouring of enthusiasm and support for all All-Star activities was really remarkable, and it reinforced the belief that there’s something unique and special about our town’s relationship with the national pastime.
Any time Stan Musial and the other living Cardinals Hall of Famers are on the field, let alone the Clydesdales, is a good day for me.
I’ll remember the All-Stars going out to shake hands and hug and do whatever with the Stars Among Us group before the game. I hope the players were sincere and meant it, but it’s great to see people who have done volunteer work thanklessly for years get thanks. I have to admit: That was the one part of everything that happened that made me cry.
DAN O’NEILL:
My favorite moment and lasting impression will have to do with Joe Torre. As always, Torre was genuinely tickled to be back in St. Louis. I covered the team when Torre was here as the manager and had not seen him in several years. It was great to catch up with one of the truly delightful people in the game.
And what I will remember is Torre’s wonderful gesture during the pregame ceremonies. Many people in St. Louis were disappointed that the All-Stars did not surround Stan Musial and embrace him in the manner they embraced Ted Williams 10 years ago. But the one All-Star who did was Torre. After President Barack Obama threw out his pitch and left the field, Torre made a point to leave the NL dugout and go over to Musialand giving him a big hug.
Torre was grossly underappreciated when he was in St. Louis. He managed teams that were built around players like Todd Zeile, Felix Jose and Mark Whiten, and he was provided a pitching staff that leaned on Bob Tewksbury as its “ace.” And in the three full seasons he had here, he averaged almost 85 wins. Yeah, what an awful manager he was.
There aren’t many people I might mention in the same breath with Stan The Man, but, at least for me, Joe Torre is one of them.
DERRICK GOOLD:
The All-Star Game has been — and likely always will be — a national holiday around my family. My father and I would watch them, tape them and then I’d watch them again until the tape wore out. The personal high point for me was seeing my father attend his first All-Star Game in person and on his lap was his 3-year-old grandson, my son, also taking in his first All-Star Game in person. The little man lasted the whole game and told me the next day that he liked the Game more than the Home Run Derby. Must be the genes. I got to share the Game with them, just as St. Louis got to share it’s love of the game with the world. While we all would have liked to see Stan Musial get a bigger moment — highlights of his career, anyone? — we shouldn’t discount all of the moments the All-Star Game allowed Musial to enjoy. He had the long chat with Albert Pujols, as deftly relayed by Rick Hummel. He attended the owners’ party. He exchanged handshakes with President Obama, saw fellow Hall of Famers and exchanged a point with friend Joe Torre. In St. Louis, it’s popular to say that we appreciate Musial as much as baseball should, and maybe the opposite is true, too. Maybe Musial appreciates St. Louis as much as baseball should. The All-Star Game gave him reason to get out and enjoy that part of the city. It was great to see him and hear about him everywhere. Like it was for my family, the best memories of the Game being here cannot be captured in a moment or in a video. It’s about sharing the Game with family, with fans, and wanting to do so again. It’s best summed up by the sentiment Musial expressed leaving the Cardinals clubhouse and photo shoot with Pujols: “I’m coming back every Sunday home game.”
KATHLEEN NELSON:
I was mystified at the contrast in fan response in the stadium to the words of Barack Obama and George W. Bush during the taped segment about the community heroes. For the current president, the crowd interspersed mild boos with mild cheers but gave a rousing hurrah to “W.” Their reaction when Obama took the field was surprisingly tepid, considering the cheers for Roy Halladay. It seemed a bit disrespectful to the president. It was a baseball game, not a political rally. I thought that people with the reputation as the classiest fans in baseball would have responded with more class, regardless of politics.
BRYAN BURWELL:
The streets of downtown bustling like a major city. That was the absolute best thing, even better than the parade.
REID LAYMANCE:
The best thing for me was something out of the spotlight that I only read about in the Seattle Times newspaper. Ichiro took time on Monday to visit the grave of George Sisler, the former St. Louis Browns star. Ichiro had broken Sisler’s single-season record for hits in 2004 and met the Sisler family then.
I don’t understand why people think the reaction to Obama had anything more to do with his lame decision to wear the Sox jacket. Any boos I heard should be attributed to his wardrobe choice. This is a baseball town, not a political one. True baseball fans recognize this.