The All-Star Game Was Funereal

We’ll start with the most significant play of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game: a hit batsman. In the top of the third, with a man on first and the AL already leading 3-0, Tampa’s Junior Caminero got smacked on the hand by a 98-mph pitch from St. Louis’s Riley O’Brien. Caminero was replaced by a pinch runner as he left to get X-rays, and immediately the day’s earlier news that the owners would try to force players to participate in the 2028 Olympics looked even more ridiculous. While Caminero’s examination yielded relief, indicating he should be able to play for the Rays on Friday, the wait for that announcement dampened what was already an alternately dull and maudlin atmosphere in Philadelphia, where scores of empty seats were visible on the broadcast before the AL finished off their 4-0 win.

Sometimes a baseball game just isn’t exciting. That’s always going to be an inherent risk. But Tuesday night didn’t do itself any favors with its mid-game musical breaks, which made for an exhaustively self-serious affair. They stopped for a recording of Ray Charles’s “America The Beautiful,” which Jennifer Hudson had already performed in the pregame, then later broke for Boyz II Men to do “I’ll Be There” as part of Mastercard’s anti-cancer ad, and still we had to sit through “God Bless America.” America 250 is ostensibly a birthday party, but birthday parties are supposed to be upbeat and fun. It felt like MLB was throwing a wake. At least we’ll always have the goofy incongruity of Ernie Clement, in a jersey that says “Toronto,” signing a Declaration of Independence–looking document as part of the starting lineup announcements.