3 days ago
- Sport
- San Francisco Chronicle
A's Brent Rooker welcomed the chance to do double All-Star HR derby duty
ATLANTA — No one ever had jumped into the box to try to settle the All-Star Game with a Home Run Derby, so it was bizarrely fitting that A's DH Brent Rooker got the first shot Tuesday at Truist Park.
'It's interesting to do two different ones in two different days,' Rooker said after the National League's derby-decided win. ' I was way more nervous for this one.'
One night before, Rooker was on the wrong end of two unfortunate events in the traditional pre-All-Star Game Home Run Derby. He was shorted two pitches in the first round when his ball bucket wasn't replenished after he took two warmup pitches, then he was knocked out of that round after an announced tie on longest ball hit with eventual winner Cal Raleigh. When the league went to decimal points to determine who advanced well after the fact, Rooker was short by less than an inch.
Tuesday, Rooker got to take three swings and he hit two out. Can we extrapolate that had he gotten his full complement of baseballs Monday, there's a good chance he'd have moved on?
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'Maybe those were the extra two,' Rooker said with a smile after Tuesday's tiebreaker round. 'They just counted tonight.'
He'd never hit off Yankees coach Travis Chapman until about two minutes before the homer-off started, taking about eight swings off him in the cage.
Rooker was in the middle of everything in the game, too. He belted a three-run homer off Giants reliever Randy Rodriguez, then was pinch-hit for late in the game. He was hanging out outside the clubhouse with his family before suddenly sprinting back inside — he had to get warmed up for a possible home-derby, the All-Star Game's version of penalty kicks.
This was unprecedented. The plan was put in place three years ago, but hadn't been needed until the American League rallied for two runs in the ninth Tuesday, and Rooker was one of the few who knew what was going on. AL manager Aaron Boone told him the day before he needed to stick around after coming out of the game just for this eventuality.
'I said, 'Yeah, absolutely, sounds cool, sounds like a good time,'' Rooker said.
On the National League side, there was a lot of confusion, according to Giants pitcher Robbie Ray, who like teammate Logan Webb stayed for the whole thing. Many of the starters had left the stadium by then, which is why the derby didn't feature Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge.
Ray saw the 'L screen' used for batting practice being readied and thought: 'What is going on right now?' Then NL manager Dave Roberts said in the ninth, '' So, guys, you won't believe this: if the game ends in a tie right now, I pre-selected three guys for a home-run derby.' Nobody knew. We were like, 'Is this really how this is going to happen?' It was definitely wild.'
Webb only knew the NL was out of pitchers and he said, jokingly, he'd considered volunteering to go back in for extra innings. (He pitched a scoreless third.)
When Webb found out how it was being decided, what he really wanted to do, given his one career homer, was volunteer to hit in the derby, 'but I think Buster (Posey) would probably call somebody,' he said with a laugh.
The NL, knowing they had Kyle Schwarber and Pete Alonso in their corner, figured they were in good shape. Schwarber was the only man to homer on all three of his swings, and that was the difference. He was named the MVP.
'I told him, 'You're just cool,'' Webb said. 'It seems like he's always there in the big moment.'
Webb, joshingly, would like to lobby for this to decide all extra-inning games.
'I have got a group text with a couple other players around baseball, and they said that we should never play an extra-innings game again,' Webb said. 'We should always end games just like that.'
