MLB All-Star Game: Giancarlo Stanton, Byron Buxton hit back-to-back HRs in AL’s 9th straight win

LOS ANGELES – When Dodger Stadium hosted the All-Star Game in 1980, the super-sized (for their time) “Diamond Vision” screens in the outfield were the big innovation, new to MLB at the time.

Forty-two years later, the game returned to Chavez Ravine. Run suppression was the looming presence this time.

The two teams, stocked with the best hitters baseball has to offer, combined for 13 hits – only four after the fourth inning, the offenses setting long before the sun did. The American League did all of its damage that inning, hitting back-to-back home runs off Dodgers right-hander Tony Gonsolin and making that stand up for a 3-2 victory on Tuesday night.

The win was the ninth straight for the AL team in the annual exhibition. The NL hasn’t won since an 8-0 shutout at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium in 2012.

This game began with a special moment for a hometown hero.

Clayton Kershaw is notorious for his single-minded focus on days when he starts. But he did a lot of things that he would not normally do on a start day.

He walked a red carpet with his family. He did an on-field TV interview right before the game. And he took a step back before throwing his first pitch, taking everything in as he started an All-Star Game for the first time in his illustrious career.

“Knowing that I’m not going to get to start an All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium ever again. It was just really cool for me to kind of take that all in at once,” Kershaw said.

“Today was different, so I did it. I won’t do it again any time soon.”

A scoreless inning followed, Kershaw giving up a first-pitch single to the Shohei Ohtani – then picking the Angels’ two-way star off first base.

The National League jumped out in front with two runs in the bottom of the inning off Tampa Bay Rays left-hander Shane McClanahan.

Ronald Acuña Jr. led off with a double and scored on a Mookie Betts’ RBI single.

After a double play cleared the bases, Paul Goldschmidt lined a solo home run into the left field pavilion.

Trea Turner followed with a single, the NL’s fourth hit in the first five batters.

Mic’d-up players did in-game interviews. There were tributes to retiring Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Jarrin and Rachel Robinson on the occasion of her 100th birthday. A sellout crowd of 52,518 hydrated, rehydrated then hydrated again.

There were bells and there were whistles on Fox’s broadcast of the game. But the National League didn’t get another hit until Braves third baseman Austin Riley led off the eighth inning with a single.

In between, National League hitters went 0 for 20 against American League pitchers. According to ESPN Stats and Info, that is tied for the second-longest hitless streak by a team in All-Star Game history behind the NL’s 0 for 22 during the 1990 game.

The AL had its one burst of offense in the fourth inning against Gonsolin, 11-0 in games that count this year.

Jose Ramirez led off the inning with a single. Two batters later, Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton crushed a 0-and-2 splitter from Gonsolin. It left his bat at 111.7 mph and landed 457 feet away in the back row of the left-field pavilion.

Four pitches later, Twins outfielder Byron Buxton (who replaced Mike Trout in the AL’s starting lineup) sent a 2-and-1 fastball on a similar journey, 425 feet into the seats.

It was the seventh time in All-Star Game history that back-to-back home runs had been hit. The most recent time – the 10th inning of the 2018 game – also came with a Dodgers pitcher as the victim. Ross Stripling gave up back-to-back home runs to Alex Bregman and George Springer.

Stanton, a former Sherman Oaks (California) Notre Dame High star, acknowledged often sitting in the left-field seats in this stadium when he would attend games growing up, not far from where the All-Star MVP’s homer landed Tuesday night.