As bad as the home run derby was on Monday night, the 80th All-Star Game was as good last night. The two-and-a-half-hour game was highlighted by defense, including this over-the-wall catch in the bottom of the seventh inning that took the National League’s go-ahead run off the board. Oh, the American League won, 4-3 [box score]. Pointless stat alert; the NL has not won the mid-summer classic since 1996, back when I was underweight and getting beat up at parties by the swim team. No, that really happened once.

Some observations on the game itself: Albert Pujols went 0-for-3 and committed an error in the first that allowed at least one run to score. He was one of many dudes on the NL team wearing white shoes, instead of their respectively-colored team-issued spikes…Tim McCarver sounded more like a third-grade teacher than a baseball analyst. Is there anyone that doesn’t know what homering from “both sides of the plate” means?…Somebody needs to explain to that broad that sang God Bless America that she’s leading the singing of everyone else in the stadium and not putting on a 2-minute concert. Don’t make the song your own, homegirl. It ain’t your song to make. And when (if ever) should we revert back to Take Me Out To The Ballgame? I swear that they had when I was at a Reds game in Cincy two weeks ago. So why do it for TV?