MLB All-Star game

I didn't make it to the end of the game, but from what I saw it was a good one this year. By the ninth inning, Tito had used all his field position players, so his team (except for the pitchers) was set for the duration. After a record-tying 15 innings and a record-shattering four hours and 50 minutes, after every player on each team that could be used was used, the AL finally put away the NL, 4-3. The last All-Star Game that will be played in the soon-to-be-demolished Yankee Stadium continued the AL's mastery of the poor NL, which hasn't won an All-Star game since 1996. There was the 2002 11-inning tie in Milwaukee; after that game the All-Star rosters were increased to 32 players per team and home-field advantage in the World Series was awarded to the winner.

For a while, it looked like this might be the NL's year to win...

The NL took a 2-0 lead, the first run coming on an opposite-field home run from Colorado's Matt Holliday. The AL tied it up with -- horrors of all horrors in Yankee Stadium -- a two-run homer from Boston's J.D. Drew. The NL struck back in the eighth with a run off Boston's Jonathan Papelbon (to the delight, somewhat strangely, of the Yankees fans). The AL tied it in the bottom of the inning.

And then they played on and on and on. And on some more. The NL got its leadoff hitter on in the ninth. Nothing. The AL had its first two on in the 10th. Nothing. The AL had its leadoff man on in the 11th and 12th, the NL in the 12th and 13th. Nothing. And some more nothing.

Then finally, in the bottom of 15th, with the NL on its last pitcher, Minnesota's Justin Morneau singled off Philadelphia's Brad Lidge, Tampa Bay's Dioner Navaro singled Morneau to second, Drew walked to load the bases and Texas second baseman Michael Young -- who hit a game-winning two-run triple in the 2006 game -- lofted a fly ball to right field that was just deep enough.

The throw from Milwaukee's Corey Hart was a little on the first-base side of home, and Morneau slid in just ahead of the tag from Atlanta catcher Brian McCann. Somewhere, commissioner Bud Selig -- who took the blame for the 2002 debacle -- let out a long, slow exhale...

Congratulations to Boston's own JD Drew. He was the fifteenth player to his a home run in his first All-Star game, and he did it with his first at bat. That tied the game at 2 runs each and won the MVP for Drew.