July 19, 1977 – All-Star Game
- Sal Maiorana
- Jul 19, 2017
- 2 min read
NEW YORK – The city was still a long, long way from recovering from the destruction wrought by the blackout less than a week earlier, the serial killer known as Son of Sam was still on the loose, and the Yankees were struggling mightily to recapture the magic of 1976 when they had ended an 11-year drought without an American League pennant.
But for one night in the big ballpark in the Bronx, there were smiles all around as the Yankees played host to the 48th annual Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
Willie Randolph and Reggie Jackson were named starters in the fan balloting, Thurman Munson, Graig Nettles and Sparky Lyle were selected as reserves, and Billy Martin was the manager of the AL squad which lost 7-5 to the National League, a sixth straight defeat for the junior circuit, and 14th in the last 15 mid-summer classics.
Joe Morgan of the Reds led off the 1977 All-Star Game with a home run off Jim Palmer.
Randolph went 1-for-5 and made a pair of sparkling defensive plays; Jackson had a single and a strikeout in his two plate appearances; Munson struck out as a pinch hitter; Nettles went 0-for-2 after he replaced one of his arch rivals, Kansas City third baseman George Brett; and Lyle was knocked around for two runs on three hits in pitching the final two innings.
Overall, not a great night for the Yankees and their manager, who, despite the fact that this was just an exhibition game, was not happy that he lost once again to Cincinnati’s Sparky Anderson, manager of the NL squad.
“We have no excuses,” said Billy Martin, who watched his starter, Jim Palmer of the Orioles, get tagged for four first-inning runs. “We battled all the way. I’m proud of all the players I picked.”
Tom Seaver didn’t pitch all that well, but that was secondary to what happened before the game when he was reminded how much he meant to New York. Having just been controversially traded by the crosstown Mets to Cincinnati a month earlier, Seaver was back in town for the first time, though, as he acknowledged, it wasn’t quite the same thing as being at Shea Stadium.
Steve Garvey of the Dodgers tagged Palmer for a solo shot in the third.
“Yankee Stadium isn’t the place that was my home, so I’m not getting the full impact (of his return to town),” Seaver said before he went out yielded three runs on four hits and a walk in two innings. “That’ll happen Aug. 19 in She Stadium; that’ll be my real homecoming.”
Nonetheless, this wasn’t a Yankees game, and there were plenty of Mets fans, and general baseball fans, among the 56,000-plus, and they gave Seaver a standing ovation when the teams were introduced. He doffed his cap, waved his arms, and the noise continued for almost a minute. “I didn’t think it was going to be that big,” he admitted. “But those people obviously had something they wanted to say.”
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