Bryant smashed the first pitch he saw – a 96 miles per hour fastball – into the first deck of seat in left field for the first Cubs hit and RBI in an All-Star game since Alfonso Soriano homered in the 9th inning of the 2007 All-Star Game in San Francisco.
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Back in his college town, Bryant showed exactly what he can do with that pitch – even against a crosstown rival who has owned him.
Boston designated hitter David Ortiz, who has announced he will retire at the end of the 2016 season, drew a one-out walk and received an ovation from the crowd and hugs from the American League bench when he came out for pinch-runner Edwin Encarnacion of the Blue Jays.
Home runs are at a point that rivals the peak of the Steroids Era, but Commissioner Rob Manfred isn’t anxious that PEDs are juicing performances. The most egregious example of this was perhaps last year’s AL voting, which featured eight Kansas City Royals players in the starting lineup before the Major League Baseball apparently cancelled some 60 million fraudulent votes. They were unable to capitalize on it in 2014, and were able to beat the New York Mets in 2015, playing more games on the road than at home in their five game series victory. In a humorous twist, he was a member of the Royals when they won the title last season, so it was his former teammates Hosmer and Perez taking him deep and winning long-term bragging rights. “This will be a couple of days that I’ll remember for a long time”. A whopping 34 of this year’s All-Stars were first-timers, and 27 players on both rosters were age 26 or younger. “I was just smiling all the way around the bases”. “I’m still 0 for 6 with six strikeouts against Chris Sale“. Bo Jackson captured the award in 1989 at Anaheim in large part because of a mammoth home run he hit off Rick Reuschel to lead off the bottom of the first inning. The one-time ratings juggernaut fell 22 and 29 percent from the 2015 All-Star Game’s preliminary numbers and is now looking at a set of all-time lows!
After a single by Red Sox outfielder Mookie Betts, Salvador Perez would launch a two-run home run to give the American League the lead for good.
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“Something that I will never forget”, Ortiz said of the cheers. Why should there be the possibility of a guy on a last-place team so directly deciding something that significant for the players of contending teams with a shot to compete for a world championship? Ball boys in retro-style mustard-and-mud Padres uniforms lent a San Diego feel to Petco, which opened in 2004. Bryant and Rizzo are on the vanguard of the next generation of NL stars, a fact not lost on their teammates. While there are many fans who do preserve the integrity of the game by voting for those who truly deserve it, there are just as many “ballot-stuffers” who will vote only for players from their favorite team. “I mean, he already is”.
