from the New York Times

July 12, 2001

ON BASEBALL

By MURRAY CHASS

Will Bobby Valentine ever beat Joe Torre and other matters from the theater of Major League Baseball, scripted and unscripted:

The minute that Alex Rodriguez, the shortstop who drives a hard bargain but has a soft spot in his heart, reached Torre on a cellular phone on a plane last Thursday night in Baltimore, Valentine and the National League didn't have a chance in Tuesday night's All-Star Game. Everything would go the American way.

Before the Seattle All-Star show ended in the American League's fifth consecutive victory, 4-1, the game provided great theater, but also another venue in which a Torre team beat a Valentine team. Regular season, World Series, All-Star Game, it doesn't matter. Torre wins, Valentine loses. Valentine won't get another shot at Torre until next season.

There will be no next season for Cal Ripken, but with the wizardry his contemporaries have come to expect, he made the All-Star Game his show. Hitting a home run in one's last All-Star Game, retirement already announced, tends to create that effect.

The home run was one of the unscripted moments. The home run Derek Jeter hit was another. While not as dramatically theatrical as Ripken's, Jeter's wasn't just another home run. It was the first All-Star home run hit by a member of the Yankees since 1959.

Yet another unscripted moment was the encounter 73-year-old Tommy Lasorda had with a broken bat as he coached at third base. That moment at first was scary, then humorous when everyone realized Lasorda had escaped injury.

The collection of moments served as a healthy antidote for complaints that even the sports world's best All- Star Game is in trouble.

"If this didn't bring it back, nothing will," Mike Piazza said. "It wasn't the most explosive offensive game, but there were the special moments."

If fans are losing interest in the game, Jorge Posada said, it's their loss. "If they didn't watch today," Posada, the Yankees' catcher, said, "they missed something special."

What was special? The little infield dance before Roger Clemens threw the first pitch. It was Rodriguez's idea. He asked Torre about it as the Yankees sat on the plane in Baltimore waiting to go home.

Ripken was voted into the lineup as the third baseman. But Rodriguez, who grew up idolizing Ripken, wanted to switch positions with him for the first inning, wanted to send Ripken back to the position he played for 2,216 consecutive games. A dynamite idea, Torre told him.

But they didn't tell Ripken until the game was starting. "You're going to play shortstop for an inning," Rodriguez told him.

Standing on the field in front of 47,364 fans at Safeco Field, Ripken balked, then looked to the dugout and saw Torre waving him over. "When I thought about it more," Ripken said, "it was a really neat tribute."

He didn't get to field any balls at short, where he had not played since September 1997, but the tone was set for the evening.

"I thought that was really cool," Piazza said. "That was a nice moment as well. Everything that surrounded A-Rod, everything that's happened with him, the money and stuff, it was a nice moment of humility to give respect to someone I'm sure he respects tremendously. That was a very special moment in the game. This whole game was special. I'm so fortunate and happy that I was able to make it."

Jeter appreciated the gesture because he feels he owes a debt of gratitude to Ripken, too.

"He's the reason taller shortstops are getting a chance to play," Jeter said. "I remember being in Little League playing shortstop and people saying, `You're too tall.' The first thing I would say is, `Look at Cal Ripken.' "

All of the people watching Ripken bat in the third inning saw him hit the home run on the first pitch from Chan Ho Park after he had received a standing ovation. Just another remarkable moment in a remarkable career.

"He seems to always come up with home runs on his big days," Jeter said, alluding to the home runs Ripken hit on the days in 1995 that he tied and broke Lou Gehrig's record for consecutive games.

"It was a lot of fun to be a part of Cal Ripken's show today," Posada said after Ripken was named the game's most valuable player. "It was a lot of fun to see him running around the bases after the home run. You could see the joy in his eyes."

Troy Glaus had a special moment, too, when he went out to replace Ripken at third in the sixth inning.

"I wished him the best of luck and said I enjoyed watching him play," Glaus said. "I was in awe of everything. I'm not sure what he said. I was just trying not to mess up what I wanted to say."

Unlike the home run, Ripken's removal was in the script. Lasorda's encounter with Vladimir Guerrero's bat was not. It happened later in the sixth inning when Lasorda, the former Los Angeles Dodgers manager and an honorary coach, was taking a turn at coaching third base. He obviously did not see the flying bat until it was on top of him, and it struck him in the leg. He fell backward and did a half somersault.

"For five seconds I was scared to death and stunned," Piazza said. "When the bat was halfway there, looking at him, you knew he did not see that bat. He had no clue where it was. For him to be all right, you can laugh. But I was so scared."

Fortunately for Piazza, Lasorda did not throw the bat at him.

Of all of the special or remarkable moments, though, Jeter's home run ranked near the top because it prompted research that turned up the fact that no Yankee had hit an All-Star home run since Yogi Berra in 1959. The Yankees had 108 players in 44 intervening games, and they had none of the 96 home runs hit in those games. That makes Jeter's home run special.