American League Wins Again, NL Hasn’t Won Since 1996
As baseball begins to say goodbye to Yankees Stadium…the AL celebrates yet another win in the midsummer classic. They won 4-3 in 15 innings on a game winning sacrifice fly from Michael Young off of losing pitcher Brad Lidge driving home Justin Morneau.
The last time the National League won (and didn’t tie) John Smoltz was the starting and winning pitcher. Ozzie Smith was playing in his final all-star game. It probably featured more potential steroid users than any all-star game in modern history.
Frank Thomas, Albert Belle, Fred McGriff, Matt Williams, Dante Bichette, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Mo Vaughn, Chuck Knoblauch, Travis Fryman, Brady Anderson, Jay Buhner, Greg Vaughn, Jeff Bagwell, Ken Caminiti, Ellis Burks, Henry Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield.
If we had Sammy Sosa and Raul Mondesi…we’d really have a full plate. Maybe Jose Canseco too.
During that time…Bill Clinton was still president…I was just 14 years old and still full of optimism, Motorola introduced the StarTac phone (the wonderphone of its era), Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl, Deep Blue defeated Garry Kasparov in chess, The IRA was still attacking Britain, The MLS just started, Dolly the cloned sheep was born, and JonBenet Ramsey was killed (remember her?).
What a great phone. Ebay and Yahoo were in their infancy. The dot com bubble hasn’t started and people were upgrading from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95. And iPod? Only tech geeks with real expensive hard drives (back then 2.1 GB was considered huge) knew what an MP3 was. Apple was a dying company ($6 stock price, split adjusted) who had just acquired Steve Jobs’s Next Computer. What was the most important event that year?
Pfizer received a US Patent for their miracle blue pill called Viagra. Would change Bob Dole’s life after he lost the election that year.
And George Bush was governor of Texas and nowhere near being president of the U.S. (those were the good ol days).
It’s amazing that the National League can go so long without winning…even just by luck. Something to think about.
Tags: 1996, all-star, American League, baseball, Bill Clinton, George Bush, National League, steroids
You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.