Kyle Schwarber's 3 homers in
All-Star Game's first tiebreaking swing-off lift NL over AL
[July 16, 2025]
By RONALD BLUM
ATLANTA (AP) — 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's kind of like the baseball version of a shootout,” he 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 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. He became the first
non-pitcher MVP without a hit.
“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 coaches.
Boone picked Brent Rooker, Randy Arozarena and Aranda on Monday, and
Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts picked Eugenio Suárez,
Schwarber and 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, 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 coach Dino Ebel to the NL hitters.
Rooker put the AL ahead by homering on his last two swings, and
Stowers hit one. Randy Arozarena 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 and deposited the third just over the
center-field fence. Schwarber took another, then hit a 461-foot
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. “And I was just kind of down there,
hoping, saying: go, go, go. And it went. And it was awesome.”
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New York Mets' Pete Alonso celebrates his three-run home run during
sixth inning at the MLB baseball All-Star game between the American
League and National League, Tuesday, July 15, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP
Photo/Brynn Anderson)
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-field 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,” Alonso said,
“and then it’s like, wait, the guy in the field got a double play to
end the inning. You’re not going in.”
What was the 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.
In earlier action
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 Edwin Díaz drove in the
tying run.
Heat on the mound
Paul Skenes, the first pitcher to start the All-Star Game each of
his first two seasons, reached 100 mph on four pitches in a perfect
first. Jacob Misiorowski, a controversial inclusion after pitching
in just five major league games in his rookie season, fired nine
pitches of 100 mph or more in a one-hit eighth 34 days after his
major league debut. The 23-year-old righty, added to the NL roster
by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, reached 102.3 mph. There were
21 pitches of 100 mph or more, down from a record 23 last year.
Robot umpire debuts
Four of five challenges were successful in the first use of the
robot umpire in the All-Star Game
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. The AL leads 48-45 with
two ties.
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