Overall, yes the National League still leads, due to a long stretch of dominance from the mid-1960s into the early 1980s. But this is not your father's All-Star Game. With its 7-5 victory Tuesday night, the AL now has an eight-game All-Star winning streak, its longest winning streak in the history of the Midsummer Classic.
Why? Look at the two starting lineups for the 76th All-Star Game. The American League's advantage fairly leaps off the page. With all due respect to the Senior Circuit, the AL lineup is more likely to produce runs at six of the nine offensive positions. If we accept the premise that the All-Star pitching is roughly even, with pitching brilliance on both sides of the argument, the AL should win. And it does.
It was a lineup without holes, without breathing spaces, without even momentary pauses, that the AL sent into play at Comerica Park.
"Any time you have possibly the league's MVP (Baltimore's Brian Roberts) batting ninth, you're a pretty good team," said Boston's Johnny Damon, the AL's starting center fielder and leadoff man.
There is no overstating how good this lineup was. It looked like it was drawn up, not by a manager, but by a higher power, an entity with even more sweeping powers than the Commissioner.
While the American League was loaded top to bottom, the National League starting lineup included two players whose 2005 numbers were decidedly sub-Star in quality. Those would be the two representatives of the New York Mets, Mike Piazza and Carlos Beltran.
We can argue about the reasons for this, but Piazza is not the offensive force that he once was, and Beltran has not yet lived up to the hype he received as the prince of the most recent free-agent class. And yet, on mere name recognition and sheer quantity of publicity, Piazza and Beltran become almost rote choices for many National League voters.
It was not particularly surprising when the American League starters piled up a 5-0 lead after just four innings. This was largely what was supposed to happen based on the relative run-producing capabilities of the two starting lineups.
All-Star MVP shortstop Miguel Tejada hit fifth for the American League team.
"I was happy to be hitting in the middle of this lineup," Tejada said. "Hitting after Manny (Ramirez), hitting in front of Vladimir Guerrero, you know you're supposed to score a lot of runs."
The National League's starting shortstop was David Eckstein, a worthy player on several different levels. But as Eckstein himself said when asked about a comparison of the two teams: "Put it this way -- I'm no Miguel Tejada.
"They've got big bats, and they can hit the ball out of the park and change the game. We've got some big bats too, but not consistently through the lineup as much as they do at each position, man-for-man. They did a really good job tonight."