All Star Weekend - The Legends Game

“Taco Hat” sounds like some kind of meme, like “Taco cat is palindrome.”

 I admit to being a bit nervous going into this experience. Bartle Hall was one thing, but I didn’t know how to react to the All Star hoopla invading our familiar ballpark. It seemed like having someone build a Starbucks in our living room. Fortunately, All Star Sunday proved to be the perfect way to ease into the experience and make it a little less like being eaten by Lion.

We arrived sometime around the middle of the Futures Game. We didn’t need to see the whole thing to achieve our primary goal: getting a good look at AAA prospect Wil Myers. The camera behind the plate got an even better look at him when he fouled one back that shattered the lens.

I told you kids to be careful! This is why we can’t have nice things.

After some between-game filler, we got to the evening’s main attraction, the Legends Game. It turned out to be more fun than I’d anticipated.

Legends and actors and models, oh my.

The highlight of course was getting to see George Brett play again, even if it was just six innings of softball silliness. It was also nice to see Ricky Henderson, Dave Winfield, Ozzie Smith, Rollie Fingers and the rest of the guys from the days when I actually recognized some of the players on the field. Most of the celebrities were a big “meh,” but then I didn’t show up to see them.

The game was mostly a lot of goofing around, which of course we expected. I also expected to find it annoying, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that for the most part it seemed kinda cute and charming.

Rollie Fingers gets some Gatorade for the ball.

Indeed, the closest it came to annoying was the final at-bat when the crowd started to chant for Bo Jackson to take a turn at the plate. I figured he’d stall for a minute and then go up and take a cut or two. But no, apparently he’s still the Bo Jackson we all know and ... know. He wandered back and forth. He pointed at his hip. Then at long last he gave in on the condition that Dave Winfield would run for him.

So let’s make a list of the problems here. First, Winfield is 11 years older than Jackson. Second, even Rollie Fingers ran the bases for himself (and I use the term “run” loosely in his case). But worst of all, two of the other players were wounded veterans from a wounded veterans softball team. So Jackson’s hip is so astoundingly terrible that he can’t play goofy softball any better than guys who got their legs blown off? I wanted the ghost of George C. Scott to storm the field and demand that they remove this little yellow coward from this baseball field full of brave men wounded in combat.

Jackson didn’t exactly ruin the mood, which remained festive and fun throughout. It was just sort of a reminder of exactly when the Royals started to go wrong (and how such a thing came to pass).