Checking In at the Break

Not-so-deep All-Star thoughts.

Image credit: MLB

I almost didn’t write anything this week. As most of you are probably sick of hearing about already, I’m neck-deep in promoting my upcoming debut novel.* But it’s not just that. In addition to a broken water heater and electrical issue that forced us to stay in a hotel for a week, our fridge went out on us this weekend. Talk about great timing. Whoever has placed this curse on my family home, I give in to all your demands. Although, if you were hoping for some sort of cash payment, boy, did you misplay your hand. I’m tapped.

*Shivering in Hell is available on September 1, 2026, but you can pre-order now!

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But you didn’t open up this article to hear me complain. At least, not about things that aren’t related to baseball. I’ll try to keep this one short and sweet, which is always a struggle for me, but since it’s the All-Star break, I thought I’d touch base on the Midsummer Classic.

I’ve written about the All-Star Game and the Home Run Derby before, but it’s been a while,* so let’s get back up to speed.

*Please feel free to pause and sing that line in the most ridiculous manner possible. If you know what I’m talking about, you know you want to do it. And if you don’t, let’s move on.

I’m writing this before the ASG, and after the Derby, so I only have details on the latter, which is, admittedly, the undercard to the main event. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth talking about, however. I’ve always loved the Derby, and I was excited to see Royals slugger Jac Caglianone show off his truly impressive power.

Unfortunately, Cags looked a little overwhelmed by the moment initially, which is understandable. He found his groove about midway through and hit some massive bombs, but it wasn’t enough to advance him past the first round. Still, he has no reason to hang his head. He tied with future HOFer Bryce Harper, who was hitting in front of the hometown fans, and topped Yankees first baseman Ben Rice, who posted the lowest total.

Caglianone has been more of a work in progress at the major league level than most of us expected, given how quickly he climbed each rung of the minors, but I’ve been encouraged by his 2026 season. Unfortunately, the Royals have disappointed all around him, but as he continues to find his power stroke in the Show, I’m looking forward to watching him and Bobby Witt Jr. light it up at Kauffman for the foreseeable future.* I’m not sure if there’s anything else to be excited about in Kansas City right now (maybe Carter Jensen and football season), but regardless of the team’s record, we should see a lot of moonshots in the years to come.

*And if we’re lucky, they’ll open up the new park in style, whenever the Royals actually make the move.

Jordan Walker put together a fantastic run in the final round, using the bonus swings to his benefit to come from behind and pull the upset over the hometown hero, Kyle Schwarber. I’m not sure how this compares to previous performances, because MLB constantly changes the format of the Derby, making it virtually impossible to compare past and present. But it was a very cool scene, watching him silence the fans with his parents cheering from the stands.

That said, Willson Contreras might have launched the most impressive dingers of the competition, despite failing to advance past the semifinals. He gave the ball quite a ride in the first round to kick the whole thing off, and as Josh Hamilton proved years ago, you don’t have to bring home the trophy to make the biggest impact. For a guy who’s had a lot of unwanted noise surrounding him the last few weeks, it was a great way to blow off some steam.

I saw a lot of complaining about the Derby being on Netflix both before and after the event. The before crowd was mostly mad about it airing on a streaming service, but the Derby has always been on ESPN, which isn’t a free broadcast network, so I’m not sure what the difference was with that. After the show, I heard some criticism about their coverage, in particular their camera work. I’ll admit that I was doing other things while it was going on, so nothing really bothered me other than a few annoying moments from the announcers.*

*I’m not sure if it was Anthony Rizzo or Hunter Pence, but one of them was just a little too keyed up for my liking, especially early on. But it never reached the level that it ruined the show for me.

Thankfully, the game itself will be on Fox, so nobody can complain about it costing money to watch. I just wish I was more excited to see it myself. The gradual Pro-Bowlization (that’s a word, right?) of the ASG continues. The blame for that begins with the players. They turn down invites more than ever and clearly don’t care about it the way players did when I was growing up, but it’s not all on them. I would say front offices and even fans don’t look at it the same way either.

And if that’s the case, that’s okay. This might sound strange coming from a guy who writes a newsletter with nostalgia in the title, but not everything has to be the same as it was when I was a kid. In fact, a lot of things probably shouldn’t be. If the MLB All-Star Game isn’t as big a deal as it was in my youth, I can handle that. There are far worse travesties in the world.

But it makes me sad all the same. As I wrote in my previous piece on the ASG, some of my favorite memories from when I was a kid were finishing up at little league and talking my mom into going to my cousins’ house for a while before we went home. We’d play backyard baseball or hotbox with the other kids in the neighborhood, and if it was the night of the All-Star Game, we’d head inside and sit in front of my aunt’s buzzing window unit while we watched the very best players in the world compete against each other in a single game. It meant a helluva lot to us, and it mattered to the players on the field as well.

I don’t know how much the players care about it today, but I’m going to take my youngest son out to my cousin’s house tonight and watch the game together in the same place where I watched so many games as a kid. I don’t know what the results of the game will be, but we’ll cheer on Bobby Witt Jr. for MVP, bask in the glow of players competing in their regular uniforms after the failed AL/NL team uniform era, and maybe, just maybe, capture something magical that my son will still be chasing with his own kids decades from now.

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Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. It’s starting to feel like I may never get to my NL thoughts I promised a few weeks back. Here’s the extremely short version: the Dodgers and Brewers are really good, the Mets aren’t, and the Phillies have the Braves in their sights. Maybe I’ll be able to do the NL more justice after the ASG, but the good news is I’m cooking up some exciting historical baseball topics, and I hope to get back to my bread-and-butter soon. In the meantime, I’ll try to keep checking in consistently. Share your ASG thoughts below, and don’t forget to pre-order your copy of Shivering in Hell.