Rosenthal: Historic All-Star swing-off proved impossible to resist for players, fans

New York Times

16-07-2025

ATLANTA – I'll admit, I was skeptical. Highly skeptical. Thinking what I'm sure a lot of fans were thinking, and still might be thinking. A swing-off to end an All-Star Game? Just another silly Major League Baseball gimmick.
But then I turned around as I prepared to interview Kyle Schwarber on Fox as he prepared for Round 2 of Tuesday night's swing-off. A good number of his National League teammates were standing behind him outside the dugout, loudly urging him on.
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Baseball is a serious, $12 billion business. The daily competition is intense. But fans want players to remember they're playing a kid's game, and often grow frustrated when they don't.
The first tie-breaking swing-off had players on both teams reacting as giddily as Little Leaguers. They spilled onto the field as the mini-Home Run Derby built to a crescendo, jumping, shouting, rejoicing.
'The AL side, I was looking at it like, they've got more guys on the line than we do. We've got to step it up a little bit,' Milwaukee Brewers reliever Trevor Megill said.
Impressive that the All-Stars reacted so strongly, considering many of them had no idea what a swing-off even was until late in Tuesday night's game.
The concept was adopted in the 2022 collective-bargaining agreement to guard against teams in the All-Star Game running out of pitchers. The 2002 game famously ended in such fashion, with former commissioner Bud Selig looking helpless as the teams left the field with the score tied 7-7 after 11 innings.
Page 83 of the CBA details how the tiebreaker works in an All-Star Game tied after nine innings, not that any of the players read it. San Francisco Giants pitchers Logan Webb and Robbie Ray said they learned about the swing-off around the ninth, and they weren't the only ones.
At least one NL player detected an immediate benefit – 'I saw (Houston Astros closer Josh) Hader getting loose, and I thought, this is better than facing Hader,' Arizona Diamondbacks outfielder Corbin Carroll said.
New York Mets closer Edwin Díaz, who allowed the tying run in the ninth on a 53.9 mph infield single by the Cleveland Guardians' Steven Kwan, took solace in his own reprieve.
'That was crazy. That was great. I think that was the best thing that happened in an All-Star Game,' Díaz said. 'I blew the game, but I was happy after I heard there was going to be a Home Run Derby.'
By the end, the vast majority of players seemed on board with a format Schwarber likened to an NHL shootout, or a soccer game decided by penalty kicks.
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Webb checked his phone afterward and opened a group text he maintains with other players around the league. Their consensus: We should never play an extra-inning game again. We should always end games just like that.
New York Yankees second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. said the same thing, seemingly willing to banish the automatic runner on second base forever.
The players were joking. We think.
In the bottom of the ninth, NL manager Dave Roberts approached the Miami Marlins' Kyle Stowers about being part of the swing-off. To Stowers, Roberts might as well have been speaking a foreign language.
'He goes, 'Hey, just a heads-up, if we tie this game, there's going to be a Home Run Derby and you're in it,'' Stowers recalled. 'I thought they were messing with me the whole time.'
Nope!
The managers were required before the game to declare their three participants for the swing-off. Both Roberts and the Yankees' Aaron Boone focused on players they knew would be playing toward the end of the game, and approached them the day before.
In grand All-Star tradition, the sport's two most famous sluggers, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, were long gone by the late innings. The current home-run leader, the Seattle Mariners' Cal Raleigh, also had been removed from the game.
Stowers wasn't part of the original NL trio. Roberts wanted Eugenio Suárez, explaining that when the Arizona Diamondbacks slugger merely touches balls in batting practice, they go 400 feet. He also wanted Schwarber, a 2022 Home Run Derby participant, and Pete Alonso, a two-time Derby champ.
The plan derailed when the Chicago White Sox's Shane Smith hit Suárez in the left pinky in the eighth inning. Suárez stayed in the game. X-rays would prove negative. But he wasn't about to risk further damage in the swing-off, a decision that surely was a relief to the Diamondbacks, not to mention fans who can't wait for their favorite team to take a run at Suárez at the trade deadline.
Roberts has known Stowers, a fellow San Diego-area resident, since the outfielder was a teenager. Butch Smith, Roberts' coach at Rancho Buena Vista (Ca.) H.S., owns a batting cage that Stowers has worked out at for about 10 years. Roberts considers Smith a second father, and also is fond of Stowers.
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So, Stowers it was to replace Suárez. Afterward, Roberts would take pride in his new nickname for Stowers, labeling his favorite Marlin, 'starfish.' He could laugh then. As Stowers prepared to hit, he did not even know the swing-off rules.
'They said three swings,' Stowers said. 'At first I thought it was three outs. Then I saw (Brent) Rooker and he took literally three swings.'
Rooker, the leadoff man for the AL, proved an inspired choice by Boone. Raleigh knocked Rooker out of the Home Run Derby the previous night only on a ridiculous, possibly fictitious technicality. And it was Rooker who started the AL's comeback from a 6-0 deficit, hitting a three-run shot off the Giants' Randy Rodriguez.
The Mariners' Randy Arozarena, whose postseason heroics in 2020 earned him the nickname, 'October Randy,' made sense as the second AL hitter. But Boone's selection of the Tampa Bay Rays' Jonathan Aranda as his anchor might earn him further ridicule from fire-breathing Yankees fans. Aranda has hit only 11 homers all season, and only 21 for his career.
Rooker began the swing-off with two homers. Stowers, who admitted to being nervous, followed with one. Arozarena then popped one of his own to give the AL a 3-1 lead.
Next came Schwarber.
As Schwarber waited to hit, he grumbled to me that the last time he was in a Home Run Derby, he lost a first-round matchup to Albert Pujols.
The year was 2022. Schwarber, on his way to leading the NL with 46 homers, was the top seed. Pujols, then 42, was in his final season. By Derby standards, it was a stunning upset.
Self-deprecation, though, is one of Schwarber's many endearing qualities. Talking to him, you would never know he is one of the game's most feared sluggers, with more home runs since 2021 than anyone but Judge and Ohtani.
Schwarber batted in the ninth inning against the Boston Red Sox's Aroldis Chapman, and broke his bat on a 99-mph sinker. For the swing-off, he needed a new bat. But fortunately, he was familiar with the NL's pitcher, Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel, from their time together during the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Ebel, in Schwarber's estimation, throws, 'great BP.'
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'Where do you want it?' Ebel asked Schwarber.
'Middle,' Schwarber replied.
'Gotcha,' Ebel said.
Still Schwarber's goal was modest: Hit two home runs to tie the score and then have Alonso finish it off. Alonso, who skipped this year's Home Run Derby, eagerly awaited his chance.
'No doubt I was ready,' Alonso said. 'I was down in (the batting cage), whacking balls, getting hot. Now I know what it feels like to be a closer, to be potentially ready to come into a game.'
As it turned out, Alonso's services weren't needed.
Schwarber gave the NL the lead, homering on each of his three swings.
Kyle Schwarber couldn't get the job done in the 9th inning
Then came the swing-off 💪 pic.twitter.com/XqxRh8PYUO
— MLB (@MLB) July 16, 2025
'That was electric, absolutely electric,' Alonso said. 'That's money. That's big time.'
'I told Schwarber afterwards, 'Dude, you're just cool,'' Webb said. 'Every time we face him, 'I'm like, 'you're just a cool dude.''
Aranda, needing one home run to tie the score and two to win, failed to hit any. The National League side erupted, with Alonso hoisting the 229-pound Schwarber into the air as the rest of the NL All-Stars shouted, 'MVP! MVP!'
Sure enough, Schwarber earned that honor, even though he went 0-for-2 with a walk in the actual game. Recalling the celebration, Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker, an NL coach, marveled at what he witnessed. Snitker, a baseball lifer who turns 70 in October, was not necessarily inclined to like the swing-off. But he, too, couldn't help but revel in it.
'I looked over and I thought, 'Look at all these grown men acting like kids,'' Snitker said. 'I loved it. The fans loved it. The guys had a ball with it.'
The Giants' Ray, who upon learning of the concept late in the game thought it was 'weird,' also came around.
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'Standing on the sidelines like that and watching home runs go out of the park,' Ray said, 'It's a lot of fun.'
Any skepticism he had, any skepticism many of us had, pretty much evaporated on a hot Atlanta night.
A swing-off to end every extra-inning game would be too much. But a swing-off to decide an All-Star exhibition?
'That was a good idea,' the Brewers' Megill said. 'Whoever did that, good for them.'
I can't believe I'm about to say this.
Amen.
(Top photo of Schwarber celebrating with his NL teammates: Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)