Desperately Seeking Relief

History will abound at the All-Star Game next week, as Major League Baseball celebrates the final season in Yankee Stadium. And even though it will be a Red Sox manager operating out of the Yankee dugout, Terry Francona does not lack in appreciation of the magnitude of this occasion.

Francona has indicated that he plans to pay homage to New York Yankee star Mariano Rivera by having the greatest reliever in baseball history close out the game. If recent history is any indication, it will be a save situation for Rivera and another American League victory. The AL is a vastly superior league to the National League--this season the junior circuit was once again dominant in interleague play, winning 149 and losing 102--and has not lost an All-Star Game since back in 1996, which, to put it in perspective, was the final year of Bill Clinton's first term in the White House.

Frankly, even given the talent deficit in the National League, this winless streak puzzles me. Albert Pujols ought to be able to singlehandedly win just one of these games. For some reason, baseball's All-Star Game, despite its apparent random and even capricious nature, has always accurately reflected any talent disparity between the two leagues. From 1960 to 1985, when the National League was clearly superior thanks largely to management that more quickly embraced African-American and Hispanic ballplayers--think Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Roberto Clemente--the American League won only three All-Star Games (and there were two All-Star Games in three of those years) and, at one point, lost 11 consecutive Midsummer Classics.

The current trend is particularly good news for fans of American League teams like Boston, Anaheim, the White Sox, the Yankees and Tampa Bay (did I just write Tampa Bay?) since victory in the All-Star Game now dictates home-field advantage in the World Series. Give a superior team the first two games at home--especially the Red Sox, so dominant in Fenway Park--and you are practically gift-wrapping the championship for the American League winner. Which helps account for three AL sweeps in the last four seasons, two of them by Boston.

Of course, none of what happens in the Bronx next Tuesday will yield a clue as to which American League team will get to take advantage of the All-Star boost.  Which gets me back to the incomparable Mr. Rivera. Over 14 seasons in New York, Rivera has saved 466 games, third all-time, and has a remarkably skimpy ERA of 2.20; this season, at age 38 and after some skeptics suggested the Yankees would regret giving him a three-year contract extension, he boasts an ERA of 1.12, the lowest mark of his career. With the Yankees in third place behind the Tampa Bay Rays and the Red Sox and young Hank Steinbrenner trying his best to imitate dad in his blustering heyday, it's easy to overlook what a good job manager Joe Girardi has done with his ballclub. He has had a raft of injuries to his best hitters, two of his three highly touted young pitchers have been total busts and LaTroy Hawkins, who was signed at no small cost to stabilize the bullpen in front of Rivera, has been so bad he is now used only in mop-up situations.

Former Yankee manager Joe Torre, for all his virtues, was a butcher when it came to handling his bullpen. When he found a reliever other than Rivera that he trusted, he used him again and again until the pitcher was hurt or had nothing left for the postseason. There is a long list of relievers that Torre abused--Scott Proctor, for example, has never been the same since throwing a combined 189 innings of relief in 2006-2007--but there is no better example of how costly Torre's approach was than the miraculous Red Sox comeback in the 2004 ALCS. No player, not Dave Roberts, not even David Ortiz was more instrumental in that final result than Yankee reliever Tom Gordon. Flash got the call from Torre 80 times during the regular season, the most appearances of his fine career, and had sustained a nifty 2.21 ERA; but by the playoffs against Boston, when Torre called upon Gordon six more times, he was spent and his ERA soared to 8.10. (Gordon took the mound 79 times the next season and hasn't been the same pitcher since.). Girardi has had a steady hand with young relievers like Edwar Ramirez and Jose Veras and somehow shown (or faked) enough confidence in Kyle Farnsworth that the fireballing righthander has actually become a somewhat reliable contributor.