Stars Align

The All-Star Game showcased the game’s best players having fun like they were 10 years old again

- Peter Gammons

How the 1981 All-Star Game ended really didn’t matter. There was no Twitter, no television or radio sports shock-talk and no blogs, so when American League manager Jim Frey had to bat Blue Jays pitcher Dave Stieb in the bottom of the ninth inning with one out and none on down a run, there were questions asked and answers given. Period.

Frey had saved Fred Lynn for that situation. But Lynn was apparently unaware, and, as was the case with so many players in the game in the ’70s and ’80s, had left and was flying home to Boston as Stieb grabbed a bat.

We were simply happy that the 1981 strike was over and we’d seen the first game played by major league players in more than two months. We were happy to see Gary Carter hit two home runs, happy to be in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium—then known as the Mistake by the Lake.

Personally, my mother had died a week earlier, and my father was going on life support, and the return of baseball was a diversion to familial agony. Baseball is routine, everyday life, normalcy from the fracture of ones life, the reminder that life goes on one measure at a time.