Man of Iron Steals Show

In his final All-Star appearance, Cal Ripken Jr. went out in such grand style Tuesday night that Chan Ho Park even delivered a room service fastball that the Baltimore Oriole third baseman had no trouble digesting.

The retiring Ripken deposited it over the left-field fence for the first run in a 4-1 American League victory during which he received several standing ovations from a Safeco Field crowd of 47,364 and ultimately was named the most valuable player, capping a night of storybook sentimentality--and a night that Tom Lasorda proved at 73 that it is now time to remain in his executive office and avoid the third-base coaching box.

While Park, the Dodger right-hander, emerged with the loss after Ripken hit his first pitch in his first All-Star appearance for a third-inning homer (“my gift for his retirement,” Park said with a smile), it was Lasorda, the Dodgers’ senior vice president, who was sent reeling.

“I’m going to be 74 in a couple months,” he said later. “I’m just not as agile as I used to be.”

A longtime mentor to National League Manager Bobby Valentine and named by Valentine as his league’s honorary manager, Lasorda was coaching third in the sixth inning when he said he followed the path of a foul ball down the right-field line and never saw the barrel end of Vladimir Guerrero’s broken black bat spiraling toward him. The bat seemed to bounce off Lasorda’s midsection--no gags about the cushioning--as Lasorda fell backward and sort of somersaulted over.

In the NL dugout, former Dodger Mike Piazza said he held his breath.

“I was so scared that my heart stopped for five seconds,” he said. “I mean, I kind of said to myself, ‘My God, Tommy’s been hit in the head at the All-Star game on national TV and they’re going to have to carry him off the field.’ I’m just thankful he wasn’t hurt and we could all get a chuckle out of it. I’m sure he’s happy to be alive.”

Lasorda was quick to grab his cap, jump to his feet and laugh at his own expense, the crowd responding with cheers and howls as Barry Bonds came out of the NL dugout to offer Lasorda a catcher’s chest protector, which he rejected, and the incident was shown repeatedly on the big screen in center field.

Commissioner Bud Selig was so concerned that he visited the NL clubhouse after the game to check on Lasorda’s condition.

“I just wanted to make sure you’re OK,” Selig said. “Take a tumble like that at our age and you never know.”

Lasorda thanked Selig, insisted the bat never hit him and said: “All those years I coached third base, that’s the first time something like that ever happened to me. I just never saw the bat coming.”

Park did and wished he hadn’t, although he was proud to be the first Korean to appear in an All-Star game and not that disturbed that his 91-mph fastball caught the middle of the plate and provided Ripken with the MVP award and a lasting memory.

“My first [All-Star] pitch and his last homer,” Park said. “I was just trying to throw strikes, make them hit it, have a quick inning. I wanted to do well, but I wanted to save myself for the games that count.”

Park retired the next three hitters, but the NL never caught up.

Nine AL pitchers, starting with Roger Clemens and ending with Seattle closer Kazuhiro Sasaki, limited the NL to three hits.

Angel closer Troy Percival pitched a hitless eighth in the unusual role of Sasaki’s setup man.

The American League led only 2-1 in the sixth when Derek Jeter and Magglio Ordonez hit consecutive home runs off Jon Lieber of the Chicago Cubs to put away a game in which AL Manager Joe Torre found a way to use all eight Seattle players to the appreciation of the partisans, who are so ecstatic over their runaway team that they even cheered former Mariners Randy Johnson, who replaced Curt Schilling as the NL’s starting pitcher, and that money-grabbing Alex Rodriguez, the AL starter at shortstop.

Actually, Rodriguez played the first inning at third base, having set up with Torre a little scheme in which Rodriguez pushed a reluctant Ripken--”I must have been the only person on the whole planet that didn’t know this was going to happen,” he said--to shortstop, his original position and the position at which he made the first of his 18 All-Star appearances.

Since this qualified as his 15th overall game at short, he passed Ozzie Smith for the most All-Star appearances at the position.

In addition, at 40, he became the oldest player to homer in an All-Star game, won his second MVP (the first was in 1991) and also joined honorary National Leaguer Tony Gwynn, who is also retiring at the end of the season, in receiving the commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award from Selig during a six-minute, sixth-inning field ceremony in which every player on both teams surrounded the lectern.

Accompanied by his family later, Ripken said he came to this last All- Star game determined to keep his eyes a little wider, to soak it all in, but so many good things happened he was now drained and finding it still difficult to shake the goose bumps.

“This may be my last All-Star game, but I don’t consider it a sad moment,” he said. “It’s just the opposite. I regard my career as a celebration of baseball. I’ve been lucky to play so many years and have so many memories. What happened here, the reaction of the fans, the reaction of the players, provided so many more. I couldn’t be happier.”

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CHAN HO PARK, Dodgers: Gave up Ripken’s homer and was the losing pitcher.

JEFF SHAW, Dodgers: Gave up one hit and got fly-ball out in one-third of an inning.

TROY GLAUS, Angels: In his only at-bat, flied to center against Matt Morris.

TROY PERCIVAL, Angels: Struck out one, walked one in his one inning of work.