ATLANTA (AP) — Kyle Schwarber was nervous.
He had played in Game 7 of the World Series, homered for the United States in the World Baseball Classic.
But he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off.
No one had.
“That’s kind of like the baseball version of a shootout,” he said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after a 6-6 tie Tuesday night in which it wasted a six-run, seventh-inning lead.
Schwarber earned the MVP award, going 0 for 2 with a walk as the NL won for the second time in its last 12 tries. He became the first non-pitcher MVP without a hit.
“It will be interesting to see where that goes,” said AL manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees. “There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular season mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that.”
Concerned about running out of pitchers in an era where no All-Star throws more than one inning, Major League Baseball and the players’ association made the change in 2022.
In baseball’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shootout, the game was decided by having three batters from each league take three swings each off coaches.
Boone picked Brent Rooker, Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Eugenio Suárez, Schwarber and Pete Alonso for the NL. Because Suárez was hit on the left hand by a fastball in the eighth inning, the NL turned to its alternate, Kyle Stowers.
Players from both teams stood outside their dugouts, some already in street clothes, jumping and shouting after each long ball from their side. Yankees coach Travis Chapman threw to the AL batters and Dodgers coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.
Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and Stowers hit one. Randy Arozarena boosted the AL lead to 3-1.
Ebel had thrown BP to Schwarber two years ago at the WBC.
“He asked me right before, he was like, where do you want it?” Schwarber recalled “I’m like, just middle. And he’s like, `I gotcha.’”
He took two pitches and deposited the third just over the center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a 461-foot drive over the right-center bullpen. After letting two more go by, he dropped to a knee while pulling the third, craned his neck and held his bat it the air as the ball landed in the fourth row of the Chop House seats.
“I didn’t hit it, obviously, my best, but I was thinking I got enough of it,” Schwarber said. “And I was just kind of down there, hoping, saying: go, go, go. And it went. And it was awesome.”
Aranda followed with a fly well short of the center-field warning track, drove a pitch about a foot shy of the top of the right-field wall and hit an opposite-field pop that dropped in medium left.
Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, didn’t have to bat and patted Schwarber on the head as fireworks went off at Truist Field.
“I felt like a closer like a closer going into a game,” Alonso said, “and then it’s like, wait, the guy in the field got a double play to end the inning. You’re not going in.”
What was the score?
MLB, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, said in 2022 that All-Star Games ending in a swing-off would be listed as tied, with a notation of the game being decided in a swing-off. MLB’s official postgame notes listed Tuesday’s outcome as a 7-6 NL victory.
In earlier action
Ketel Marte’s two-run double in the first had put the NL ahead, and Alonso’s three-run homer off Kris Bubic and Corbin Carroll’s solo shot against Casey Mize opened a 6-0 lead in the sixth.
The AL comeback began when Rooker hit a three-run pinch homer against Randy Rodríguez in a four-run seventh that included Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI groundout. Robert Suarez allowed consecutive doubles to Byron Buxton and Witt with one out in ninth, and Steven Kwan’s infield hit on a three-hopper to third off Edwin Díaz drove in the tying run.
Heat on the mound
Paul Skenes, the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game each of his first two seasons, reached 100 mph on four pitches in a perfect first. Jacob Misiorowski, a controversial inclusion after pitching in just five major league games in his rookie season, fired nine pitches of 100 mph or more in a one-hit eighth 34 days after his major league debut. The 23-year-old righty, added to the NL roster by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, reached 102.3 mph. There were 21 pitches of 100 mph or more, down from a record 23 last year.
Robot umpire debuts
Four of five challenges were successful in the first use of the robot umpire in the All-Star Game
Styling
Teams were back in their regular-season club jerseys — whites for the NL, mostly grays for the AL — after four years of special All-Star uniforms that were much criticized. The AL leads 48-45 with two ties.