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Close with NY flair

Stadium crowd is low-key early, but Wagner, Mo deliver late juice

Ken Davidoff

July 16, 2008

Alex Rodriguez left in the top of the fifth inning, Joe Crede replacing him with one out, and for a fleeting moment, you hoped ("you" meaning "I") that A-Rod would get down on one knee, whip a jewelry box out of his back pocket and propose to Madonna on national television.

After all, who knows upstaging better than the Yankees' third baseman?

No such luck, however, and when Derek Jeter received a similar departure in the sixth inning of this All-Star Game, you had to wonder whether the Yankee Stadium crowd would go home feeling disappointed.

That they had nothing invested in this Midsummer Classic besides the World Series homefield advantage, in a season when their Yankees are destined to miss the playoffs.

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Leave it to the top two enemies, the Red Sox and the Mets, to give the fans their money's worth, and then some.

With Terry Francona occupying Joe Girardi's office, with three Red Sox in the starting lineup and one more (David Ortiz) voted in but injured, and with another three guys holding spots on the reserve corps, the odds dictated the defending World Series champs playing a significant role in this game.

J.D. Drew brought the AL back into the game, with a tying, two-run homer in the seventh. And Jonathan Papelbon, the man delusional enough to suggest that he was just as deserving as was Mariano Rivera to close, drew the fans' wrath by giving up a go-ahead run in the top of the eighth.

Yet just as it seemed that the Yankees fans were going to revel in an AL loss, exhibiting their finest schadenfreude over Papelbon's defeat, who should step in from the other side but Billy Wagner?

And before you even had time to do an "I Told You So" dance over Papelbon, Wagner handed back the NL's lead, serving up a single to Grady Sizemore and a tying double to super rookie Evan Longoria in the eighth.

The exciting eighth set up some thrilling sequences in extra innings, with Mariano Rivera - who wanted so badly to close out an AL victory in his home park - relegated to a no-decision.

We saw Rivera escape a first-and-third, one-out situation in the 10th by getting Dan Uggla to hit into an inning-ending, 4-6-3 double play. Then we saw Uggla nearly lose the game single-handedly, committing a pair of errors to set up the AL with the bases loaded and none out, only to watch Colorado's Aaron Cook escape that.

Then the AL appeared poised to win the game in the 11th when Michael Young delivered a one-out single to centerfield with teammates on first and second. But Pittsburgh's Nate McLouth came up with the ball quickly and fired it home, where the Dodgers' Russ Martin blocked the plate and tagged out the slow-footed Rays catcher, Dioner Navarro.

It provided quite a roller coaster - a pleasant surprise, since, for 6 1/2 innings, the Stadium felt more like a mausoleum, and you had to wonder whether we were getting a glimpse of the future.

This was a corporate-heavy crowd, after all, the sort of vibe that we'll probably be getting far more often when the new Yankee Stadium opens next year. People more interested in closing their business deals than who's closing.

Then Drew brought his team back into the game, and then Papelbon put the AL back behind. With the fans chanting "Mariano!" and "Overrated!" Papelbon surrendered a leadoff single to Miguel Tejada, and with one out, Tejada stole second and reached third when Navarro's throw skipped into centerfield. Adrian Gonzalez's sacrifice fly to leftfield allowed Tejada to score easily.

Wagner took Papelbon off the hook, and by then, the New Yorkers were fully invested, with the great Rivera in the game.

Mariano picked up neither the victory nor the save, and no one will remember what A-Rod or Jeter did.

Nevertheless, this Midsummer Classic, as it forged well past midnight, proved worthy of its setting.