Last night’s MLB All-Star Game in Atlanta proved that sometimes the best way to end a baseball game is to throw all the rules out the window and let grown men play backyard ball in front of 40,000 people.
After nine innings of perfectly normal All-Star Game shenanigans—featuring Paul Skenes throwing heat, the American League staging a six-run comeback, and probably at least three players forgetting which dugout they belonged to—the score was tied 6-6. In any other universe, this would mean extra innings. But apparently, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred looked at his watch, remembered he had dinner plans, and said, “You know what? Let’s just have a Home Run Derby instead.”
And so baseball history was made with the sport’s first-ever All-Star Game “swing-off”—a sentence that somehow sounds both ridiculous and inevitable at the same time.
Kyle Schwarber: Professional Show-Off
Enter Kyle Schwarber, who apparently decided that hitting one home run in a swing-off would be for amateurs. The Philadelphia Phillies designated hitter proceeded to launch three straight moonshots like he was playing MLB The Show on rookie difficulty. The National League won the tiebreaker 4-3, with Schwarber taking home All-Star Game MVP honors for essentially playing the world’s most expensive game of batting practice.
Somewhere, every Little League coach who ever said “it’s not about the home runs, it’s about small ball” was probably reconsidering their life choices.
The Takeaway
The 2025 All-Star Game will go down as the night baseball officially embraced its inner chaos. It was “the sort of ending ordinarily reserved for Wiffle ball,” except with million-dollar contracts and national television coverage.
Sure, purists might complain about the integrity of the game, but honestly? After watching Kyle Schwarber turn a tied All-Star Game into his personal batting practice session, who’s really going to argue with that entertainment value?
Sometimes the best way to honor tradition is to completely ignore it and let the big boys swing for the fences. Thanks for the memories, Atlanta—and thanks for proving that even in 2025, baseball still has the capacity to surprise us.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go practice my swing-off technique. You know, just in case.
Leave a Reply