Last night's MLB All-Star Game at Great American Ball Park "concluded five days of festivities that turned Cincinnati ... into a celebration of the national pastime and the Queen City’s love for the game," according to Todd Jones of the COLUMBUS DISPATCH. The game drew a sellout crowd of 43,656, and thousands of fans, "still exuberant" about Reds 3B Todd Frazier winning the Home Run Derby a night earlier, "lined the streets of Downtown on Tuesday afternoon" for the All-Star Game Parade. They "cheered members of each team as they rode to the ballpark" (COLUMBUS DISPATCH, 7/15). In Minneapolis, La Velle Neal III reports the crowd -- the fifth-largest in ballpark history -- "was charged up by Pete Rose’s first appearance ever in the park" that opened in '03. Rose, "banned from baseball for gambling, was allowed to attend after he was named one of the four greatest Reds players" (Minneapolis STAR TRIBUNE, 7/15). In Boston, Peter Abraham writes Cincinnati "put on a good show." The new-look Home Run Derby "was a great success on Monday, and Tuesday night started with four of the greatest living players -- Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays -- coming out arm in arm" (BOSTON GLOBE, 7/15).
FIT FOR A QUEEN: Fox' Joe Buck after last night's game said Cincinnati was a "great host" (
"Fox Sports Live," FS1, 7/15). In Kentucky, John Clay writes if fans "ever doubted it, Cincinnati really is a baseball town." While Cincinnati "is a small-market town, it proved it knows how to put on a big-time event." The Home Run Derby featured "a football crowd, anticipating every swing, groaning at the balls that didn't carry and roaring for every projectile that cleared the fence." It likely achieved "more feel-good buzz than any previous Home Run Derby." Clay: "Cincinnati has made the whole All-Star experience awesome. But then we shouldn't have doubted it. Cincinnati has always been a baseball town" (
LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER, 7/15). A CINCINNATI ENQUIRER editorial states the city "rocked the multi-day spectacle that is the All-Star Game," as the "character and uniqueness of today's Cincinnati shone through." From the opening Demi Lovato concert "to the first pitch Tuesday night, everything went right, except, on occasion, the weather." MLB "shouldn't wait 27 years for its next visit," as Cincinnati "proved itself a city big enough to throw a proper All-Star Game and yet small enough to totally embrace it" (
CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 7/15).
