ATLANTA — It was nearing midnight in Georgia, magic hour in song and, as it would happen, baseball history. It was March 2, 1974, when Gladys Knight & The Pips won a Grammy and carved a phrase forever into musical amber with “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
Thirty-seven days later, Hank Aaron hit one of the most meaningful home runs in baseball history, No. 715, to pass Babe Ruth as the home run king. In the last hours of Tuesday night in Georgia, in which 715 was honored on 7/15 at the All-Star Game, history seemed to appear out of nowhere.
The All-Star Game was tied, a source of embarrassment for MLB in 2002 when the teams ran out of pitchers and MLB sent everybody home without a conclusion, as dispiriting as the film projector conking out at an old movie theater. Baseball’s fix, which has been in place for several years, was to arrange a mini-home run derby to decide the winner: three players for each side get three swings each.
Privately, no one in MLB was sure they wanted to see it. The biggest stars of the game are long gone from playing by the ninth inning. Who would care about a “swing-off” between the back ends of All-Star rosters?
But then, midnight approaching, the voice of Gladys Night and the majesty of Hank Aaron redolent in the thickness of the air, something almost magical happened. Before leadoff hitters Brett Rooker of the Athletics and Kyle Stowers of the Marlins—great hitters but not exactly A-list baseball celebrities—took the first hacks, players from both teams swarmed out of the dugout and filled the track and area near home plate. Tarik Skubal, the AL starting pitcher almost four hours ago, came out in his street clothes.
You could feel a buzz growing. The All-Star Game stopped being meaningful years ago. But here were the best players in the game acting as if they were back in an American Legion tournament. They . It was the best kind of historic moment: organic, unexpected, fun.
Kyle Schwarber would decide the game and win the MVP by hitting home runs with all three of his swings, giving the NL a 4-3 edge in the swing-off without the need for NL closer Pete Alonso to take his mighty hacks.
But to best understand why the night succeeded, you were best off checking in with Jonathan Aranda, the third hitter for the AL who did not homer with his three swings, though one smacked off the brick wall in rightfield a few feet below clearing it.
“I saw all of my teammates out there,” Aranda says. “And everybody was happy. Everybody is a part of history.”
Gladys Knight sang of a Los Angeleno going back to find “a simpler place and time” and buying “a one-way ticket back to the life he once knew.” The 95th All-Star game moved in an opposite direction: forward. Not only was the swing-off a hit that now looms over the game as dessert rather than a side of overcooked string beans, but the game also gave us the first use of the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system in full MLB competition. (It was tried out in spring training to rave reviews.)
In a literal sign of the future, the line score lit up on the huge videoboard at Truist Park included “R, H, E, ABS,” with the tote of challenges remaining sitting right there with the traditional categories of runs, hits and errors. Players and fans delighted in each use of the challenge system.
More than anything else, what made the night memorable was the delightful buy-in from the players about the swing-off. When much of the noise entering the game was the downbeat from player after player bagging out of the game for various reasons, the care from the players who stuck around to midnight was downright charming. The ones who could not be bothered with showing up and playing in the Midsummer Classic should know they missed a gem.
Aranda, the 27-year-old Tampa Bay Rays first baseman, would not have missed it for the world. Aranda grew up in Tijuana, Mexico, playing baseball since the age of four with Alejandro Kirk, who would sign with the Toronto Blue Jays and be teammates again with Aranda at the All-Star Game.
One day in the spring of 2015, a Rays executive named Carlos Rodriguez went to Tijuana to attend a workout of Randy Arozarena, an international free agent. But Arozarena, also an AL All-Star this year, didn’t show for the workout. A local Rays scout essentially told Rodriguez, “Hey, as long as you’re here, you might as well take a look at a few promising teenage players.” One of those players was Aranda, a 17-year-old middle infielder then who bats left and throws right. Thanks to Arozarena’s absenteeism, the Rays signed him for $130,000.
It took Aranda seven years to reach the big leagues and another three to lock down regular playing time, which he has done this year at first base with a .324/.399/.492 slash line. On Monday, Yankees manager and AL manager Aaron Boone asked Aranda if he would like to be one of his three swing-off hitters.
“I wasn’t going to use a starter,” Boone says. “I thought about [Byron] Buxton, but he had just been in the Home Run Derby. I thought Aranda would like to do it. And I knew one thing: he wouldn’t be nervous. He’s got a slow heartbeat.”
Says Aranda, “He asked me [Monday] and I said yes right away.
“But I never thought it was going to happen.”
Rooker, hitting first, smacked two homers, much to the delight of his whooping teammates.
“It was so cool to look back and see everybody into it,” he says. “I had no idea they were going to do that. Nobody knew what would happen. It was just so cool.”
Stowers responded with one homer. Arozarena, batting next for the AL, popped one. Schwarber delivered his three home runs. Aranda was next. The game was in his hands. He had reached base on a hit and walk in his two plate appearances in the game. He barely missed getting the swing-off to Alonso.
“I hadn’t even hit in the cage,” he says. “I was ready to go. I wasn’t nervous at all.”
Schwarber walked away with the Ted Williams Award as the MVP of the game. But afterward, in the happiest losing clubhouse you have ever seen, Aranda was smiling. He had spent eight years in the minors taking 2,301 plate appearances before getting his first hold of a major league job. He earned his All-Star selection by vote of the players.
Let others turn down selections to “rest” or “prepare for the second half.” Let the A-listers hop on jets out of town before the game was over. A grinder like Aranda was going to milk every thrilling experience out of the All-Star week. And in the end, as midnight fell and both teams walked off the field happy, one truth was obvious about an unexpectedly historic night: you had to be there.