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The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, center, stands with his National League teammates during the national anthem before the MLB All-Star game on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
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The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, center, stands with his National League teammates during the national anthem before the MLB All-Star game on Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
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By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer
ATLANTA — Kyle Schwarber was nervous.
He had played in Game 7 of the World Series, homered for the United States in the World Baseball Classic.
But he had never walked up to the plate in an All-Star Game swing-off.
No one had.
“That was like the baseball version of a shootout,” the Philadelphia Phillies slugger said after homering on all three of his swings, going down to his left knee on the final one, to overcome a two-homer deficit. That held up when Tampa Bay’s Jonathan Aranda fell short on the American League’s final three swings, giving the National League a 4-3 swing-off win after a 6-6 tie Tuesday night in which it wasted a six-run, seventh-inning lead.
Schwarber earned the MVP award, going 0 for 2 with a walk as the NL won for the second time in its last 12 tries.
“It will be interesting to see where that goes,” said AL manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees. “There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular season mix. I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that.”
Concerned about running out of pitchers in an era where no All-Star throws more than one inning, Major League Baseball and the players’ association made the change in 2022.
In baseball’s equivalent of soccer’s penalty-kicks shootout, the game was decided by having three batters from each league take three swings each off of coaches.
Boone picked the Athletics’ Brent Rooker, Seattle’s Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez, Schwarber and the New York Mets’ Pete Alonso for the NL. Because Suárez was hit on the left hand by a fastball in the eighth inning, the NL turned to its alternate, Miami’s Kyle Stowers.
Players from both teams stood outside their dugouts, some already in street clothes, jumping and shouting after each long ball from their side. Yankees coach Travis Chapman threw to the AL batters and Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.
Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and Stowers hit one. boosted the AL lead to 3-1.
Ebel had thrown BP to Schwarber two years ago at the WBC.
“He asked me right before, he was like, where do you want it?” Schwarber recalled “I’m like, just middle. And he’s like, I gotcha.”
He took two pitches then deposited the third just over the center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a drive over the right-center bullpen. After letting two more go by, he dropped to a knee while pulling the third, craned his neck and held his bat it the air as the ball landed in the fourth row of the Chop House seats.
“I didn’t hit it, obviously, my best, but I was thinking I got enough of it,” Schwarber said. “I was just kind of down there, hoping, saying: go, go, go. And it went. And it was awesome.”
Aranda followed with a fly well short of the center field warning track, drove a pitch about a foot shy of the top of the right 0field wall and hit an opposite-field pop that dropped in medium left.
Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion, didn’t have to bat and patted Schwarber on the head as fireworks went off at Truist Field.
“I felt like a closer, like a closer going into a game,” said Alonso, who began warming up in a batting cage when the AL tied the score in the ninth inning. “And then it’s like, wait, the guy in the field got a double play to end the inning. You’re not going in. I was ready for it, but I’m glad Schwarbs did it and we did it the easy way.”
So, what was the final score?
MLB, after consulting with the Elias Sports Bureau, said in 2022 that All-Star Games ending in a swing-off would be listed as tied, with a notation of the game being decided in a swing-off. MLB’s official postgame notes listed Tuesday’s outcome as a 7-6 NL victory.
Ketel Marte’s two-run double in the first had put the NL ahead, and Alonso’s three-run homer off Kris Bubic and Corbin Carroll’s solo shot against Casey Mize opened a 6-0 lead in the sixth.
The AL comeback began when Rooker hit a three-run pinch homer against Randy Rodríguez in a four-run seventh that included Bobby Witt Jr.’s RBI groundout. Robert Suarez allowed consecutive doubles to Byron Buxton and Witt with one out in ninth, and Steven Kwan’s infield hit on a three-hopper to third off of Mets closer Edwin Díaz drove in the tying run.
Joe Torre, the 84-year-old former Yankees manager, went to the mound for a pitching change in the eighth to take the ball from Shane Smith and hand it to Andrés Muñoz. The Hall of Famer was picked as a coach by current New York skipper Aaron Boone, who managed the AL.
HEAT ON THE MOUND
Pittsburgh Pirates ace Paul Skenes, the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game each of his first two seasons, struck out Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene in a perfect first that included Aaron Judge’s inning-ending groundout. The 23-year-old right-hander from El Toro High reached 100 mph on four of 14 pitches.
Last year, in Texas, Skenes walked one batter in his scoreless inning, a blip he said “pissed me off” and pushed him to attack hitters for his encore.
“I was throwing every pitch as hard as I could,” Skenes said, “hoping that it landed in the strike zone.”
Milwaukee Brewers rookie Jacob Misiorowski, a controversial inclusion after pitching in just five major league games, fired nine pitches of 100 mph or more in a one-hit eighth inning 34 days after his major league debut. The 23-year-old righty, added to the NL roster by MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, reached 102.3 mph.
There were 21 pitches of 100 mph or more, down from a record 23 last year but up from 13 in 2023, 10 in 2022 and one in 2021.
ROBOT UMPIRE DEBUTS
This year’s exhibition was the first game to feature the automated ball-strike system at the major league level outside of spring training, an expected precursor to MLB implementing the arrangement for all games beginning next season.
The rules Tuesday were the same as the ABS challenge rules introduced during spring training. Each team received two challenges for the game. Only the pitcher, catcher or batter could request a challenge, and the request needed to be immediate without help from the dugout or other players on the field.
In the end, five pitches were challenged. The historic first was an 0-and-2 changeup that AL starter Tarik Skubal threw to San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado that plate umpire Dan Iassogna called a ball in the first inning. Skubal and catcher Cal Raleigh didn’t agree, so they challenged the pitch to make history. The call was overturned, ending Machado’s at-bat with a strikeout.
“I wasn’t even going to use them,” Skubal said. “But I felt like that was a strike and you want that in an 0-2 count.”
A’s rookie Jacob Wilson (Thousand Oaks High) also was successful as the first batter to call for a challenge, reversing a 1-and-0 fastball from Washington’s MacKenzie Gore in the fifth inning that had been called a strike. Mets closer Edwin Díaz and Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk also won challenges, and Stowers lost one.
EARNING A HAND
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman was removed for Alonso with two outs in the third inning, giving the crowd of 41,702 a chance to cheer a player who spent 12 seasons with the Braves and helped Atlanta win the 2021 World Series title.
RECREATING AARON’S 715TH HOMER
MLB honored late Hall of Famer Hank Aaron by recreating his record-breaking 715th home run through the use of projection mapping and pyrotechnics.
The lights went down at Truist Park and fans stood holding their cell phone lights following the sixth inning. The scene from April 8, 1974 at old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was projected on the infield and also shown on the video board.
The high-tech images of Aaron and other players were seen on the Truist Park infield before a blaze of a fireball launched from home plate to signify the homer that pushed Aaron past Babe Ruth’s record of 714 homers.
Aaron’s widow, Billye Aaron, stood and waved as the cheers from the sellout crowd of 41,702 grew louder.
NL players warmed up for the game in batting practice jerseys with Aaron’s No. 44 on the back
One year ago, MLB celebrated the 50th anniversary of Aaron’s homer with announcements for a new statue at Baseball’s Hall of Fame and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.
Also, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred helped honor Aaron in Atlanta last year by joining the Braves in announcing the $100,000 endowment of a scholarship at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Aaron’s home state of Alabama.
Manfred noted the Henry Louis Aaron Fund, launched by the Braves following Aaron’s death in 2021, and the Chasing the Dream Foundation, created by Aaron and his wife were designed to clear paths for minorities in baseball and to encourage educational opportunities.
Aaron hit 755 home runs from 1954-76, a mark that stood until Barry Bonds reached 762 in 2007 during baseball’s steroid era.
Aaron was elected to the Hall in 1982. A 25-time All-Star, he set a record with 2,297 RBIs. He continues to hold the records of 1,477 extra-base hits and 6,856 total bases.
STYLING
Teams were back in their regular-season club jerseys – whites for the NL, mostly grays for the AL – after four years of special All-Star uniforms that were much criticized.
New York Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. arrived in a Valentino smoking jacket and Christian Louboutin shoes. Instead of having players line up on the foul lines as they were introduced, they walked to a four-level red podium stretching across the infield dirt with flashing lights, smoke a DJ and dancers.
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