All-Star Game at Coors Field: 10 years later

Coors Field took center stage decade ago

By Jack Etkin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published July 6, 2008 at 10:06 p.m.

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The All-Star Game began with a single, a fitting start the way things turned out 10 years ago tonight at Coors Field. Greg Maddux, who gave up that hit, started for the National League, an assignment he earned with a 12-2 record and 1.54 ERA for the Atlanta Braves.

Maddux escaped unscathed and pitched two scoreless innings. So did American League starter David Wells, who had thrown a perfect game for the New York Yankees on May 17 of that season.

It was as if Coors Field spared them, Maddux for what then was his annual excellence and Wells for his rare gem, before going after nearly everyone else who took the mound with varying degrees of fire-breathing vengeance in the 69th All-Star Game.

There was some midgame suspense thanks to a mammoth three-run homer by Barry Bonds before the American League, scoring in each of the final six innings and setting a record for the most innings scored in the game by one team, pulled away and won 13-8 in three hours, 38 minutes.

The longest nine-inning All-Star Game finally ended at 10:20 p.m. when Anaheim's Troy Percival struck out Houston's Moises Alou, and a crowd of 51,267, a record for any game at Coors Field, witnessed a host of All-Star Game records. None pertained to pitching because this was Coors Field, pre-humidor.

"This place had a reputation of being arena baseball and all that. The All-Star Game didn't do anything to disprove that," said then-Atlanta shortstop Walt Weiss, a National League starter who had spent the previous four seasons with the Rockies and who had two hits in a successful and poignant homecoming.

The 21 combined runs are an All-Star Game record. The AL tied the All-Star Game record for most runs by one club and most hits (19). The teams tied a record by combining for 31 hits and set a record by scoring in 10 half-innings. The AL's 16 singles set a record as did the combined 26.

"You saw some balls bloop in, freak hits, (because) guys had to play deep . . . ," NL manager Jim Leyland said after the game. "It was kind of a Colorado Coors Field game in some ways."

Leyland, then managing a payroll-purged Florida team, would see plenty of those in 1999 after leaving the Marlins to manage the Rockies. One last-place finish was enough, and Leyland resigned with two years remaining on his Rockies contract.

Memorable homecoming

Atlanta shortstop Walt Weiss, at 34 years, 7 months, was the oldest position player to make his All-Star debut as a starter and went 2-for-3, scoring one run and driving in another. Those were statistical afterthoughts considering what Weiss went through leading to the game.

On Father's Day, Weiss had to fly home from Montreal because his son Brody, then two months short of his fourth birthday, was in critical condition. He had contracted a strain of E. coli bacteria from contaminated water at an Atlanta water park. His kidneys shut down and he was on dialysis.

"The day they released him from ICU into just a regular hospital room was the day they announced the All-Star team, and I had won the voting," said Weiss, who left the Rockies as a free agent after the 1997 season.

When Brody was released from the hospital, doctors were concerned about him possibly being exposed to bacteria on a commercial flight to Denver. That was avoided when Rockies owner Jerry McMorris made his private plane available to the Weiss family.

Now a Rockies special assistant, Weiss came back to Coors Field batting .325 with a .425 on-base percentage and was embraced by Rockies fans, in particular during the pregame introduction where a hand-held camera was riveted on Weiss.

"I was trying to keep it together," Weiss said. "I think I did, but it was emotional because when they did (the introduction), they also had my son and my wife (Terri) - he was sitting on her lap, I believe - on the JumboTron."

Weiss, who played six innings, singled off Roger Clemens in his first at-bat in the third, singled off Brad Radke in the fourth and flied out against Rolando Arrojo in the sixth.

"The whole game was icing on the cake to that weeklong period," Weiss said. "It was a whirlwind. I don't think I had a free minute in the three days I was here. It's probably one of the high points in my career, in my life, really, just because of the happy ending. It was tough sledding for a while, but it all came together right about the time I came out here for the game."

MVP

Baltimore second baseman Roberto Alomar was named the game's Most Valuable Player. He went 3-for-4, with a homer in the seventh off San Diego's Trevor Hoffman, a first-time All-Star.

"The year before, I won the (All-Star) MVP in Cleveland," said Indians catcher Sandy Alomar Jr., who played in his sixth and final All-Star Game in 1998. "The first thing he (Roberto) say, 'Hey, my brother got one; I got one.' He was excited about that. I was happy for him, too."

Small wonder

The NL took a 6-5 lead in the fifth when Barry Bonds, who played in 13 All-Star Games and started 12, hit the first of his two All-Star homers. It soared 451 feet, a three-run shot to right-center field off Cleveland's Bartolo Colon.

But the AL followed its game plan to quickly regain control. Infield hits by Alomar and Seattle center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. began the sixth, when the AL regained the lead with three runs.

Alomar and Griffey pulled off the first double steal in an All-Star Game since 1986, and Alomar scored and Griffey took third on catcher Javy Lopez's passed ball. Griffey scored on a wild pitch by Montreal's Ugueth Urbina, the losing pitcher.

"It was due to aggressive baserunning," said AL manager Mike Hargrove, then managing Cleveland. "That's what we talked about to the players before the game. 'This park really plays small because of the (thin) air, but we can go out, and if we're aggressive on the bases, really play this game to win and not just to have a good time, we can do that without having to hit the ball out of the ballpark.' And it just happened that way."

Passing fancy

Beanie Babies were all the rage 10 years ago. The All-Star Game didn't need a promotional lure, but fans entering Coors Field were given Glory, a red, white and blue bear.

"We pick them up from time to time from people who went to the game," said Bill Vizas, owner of Bill's Sports Collectibles. "You had people buying them right and left outside the stadium for, I think like a hundred bucks, 150 bucks after the game. Now when we pick them up in a collection with real sports memorabilia, we put them out for $4.99. It's like something they probably would have been best to give their 4-year-old, instead."

Low profile

Shortstop Omar Vizquel, then with Cleveland, played in his first All-Star Game in 1998 and remembers little about what happened on the field. He pinch hit in the eighth, singled off Jeff Shaw and stayed in the game.

"I don't remember the hit, really," said Vizquel, 41, who has played in three All-Star Games. "The memory I have that day - they didn't let me into the ballpark. I didn't have my ID and they didn't want to let me in. You get your feelings hurt. You're expecting to walk in and say, 'OK, I'm going to go play. I finally made it to the All-Star Game.' And here's a guy saying, 'Who the hell are you?'

"I had to wait about five minutes. They tried to figure out who I was. One of the major league (security) guys told the guy, 'Hey, this is one of the players. You got to let him in.' So they let me in."

Scathing review

Coors Field, then in its fourth season, was on a national stage for the first time with the All-Star Game. The Rockies had played two games there in a division series with Atlanta in 1995, the year the ballpark opened, but the All-Star audience and the media contingent covering the event were much larger.

Thomas Boswell, a respected columnist for The Washington Post, began his column by writing, "Coors Field is a beautiful joke."

Boswell praised Coors Field for its aesthetics but after watching the two teams combine for an All-Star record 31 hits, lamented how an excessively large outfield, necessary because the ball flies farther 5,280 feet above sea level, ruins the game's perfect dimensions that have lasted for generations.

"Coors Ball . . . is a confused, capricious mess that measures skill poorly, offers little of value and is barely worth watching," Boswell wrote. "In the long perspective of baseball history, Coors Field serves only one purpose. Maybe, if prayers can be answered, it will prevent another high-altitude park from being built. Ever."

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