2010 MLB All-Star Game Liveblog: Brian McCann’s Big Double Powers NL To Streak-Snapping 3-1 Win

It should come as little surprise, but Brian McCann, who delivered the big bases-clearing double in the seventh off fellow lefty Matt Thornton, has been named the game’s most valuable player. Bud Selig comes out to hand off the Ted Williams MVP Trophy, which is a long crystal bat. Let the debate rage over which is the cooler trophy: the long crystal bat MVP trophy, or the bronze(?) crossing-bat Home Run Derby trophy. As an American, naturally, I prefer the thing that’s bigger, but what’s really important here is that no matter which trophy is cooler, they’re both way cooler than the World Cup, which is a blight on everyone involved. I have a theory that trophies should be proportional to the number of people that care about them. Following that idea, the World Cup should be made of astatine and contain the entire moon somewhere.

For the second night in a row, an event I was dreading was made more tolerable by liveblogging the whole time. I think this really is a valuable lesson, particularly for bloggers of bad baseball teams who’re out of the race, such as myself. It wasn’t just the liveblogging this time, though. This was an All-Star Game, and it was over in just under three hours. Now, last year’s All-Star Game was the shortest All-Star Game since 1988, which (A) I didn’t realize, and (B) we were never going to match, but you always expect an exhibition like this to drag on longer than your standard nine-inning tilt, so kudos to Charlie Manuel and Joe Girardi for whatever they did to lull their lineups to sleep. We were one Brian McCann swing of the bat away from having Hong-Chih Kuo as an MVP favorite.

On the heels of Ubaldo Jimenez and David Price being named starting pitchers for Tuesday’s All-Star Game, managers Charlie Manuel and Joe Girardi also named their respective starting lineups. They are:

National League