As you can see, Cancer (my own sign) is at the top, while Aquarius (my wife's sign, who hates baseball) is bringing up the rear. It's worth noting that the All-Star Game itself occurs during Cancer time - or rather, while the sun is in Cancer? Is that how to say it? - while Aquarius happens deep in the offseason. I put together this list using my patented MLB Roster Database, excerpts from which I also tweeted prior to the game. Here's the victorious AL Roster, with fantasy points up to date as of the 2018 All-Star Break:
As you can see, it's organized with the fan-elected starting lineup at the top, then the reserves in the next chunk, followed by pitchers. On the right, you can see how each player made his way onto the roster (with the exception of Justin Verlander, whose status wasn't listed, but since he was unavailable for the game, it's a moot point). And now check out the NL Roster:
I didn't bother to arrange the starters in the order that they appeared on the lineup card, which was an admitted oversight on my part, since the lineups had been posted for days. However, I DID do that on the following charts, which are part of a larger project I've embarked on in the last few weeks: a 20th anniversary retrospective of the 1998 season! This was inspired partly by Grant Brisbee's weekly recaps of the thrilling McGwire-Sosa home run record chase, and partly because the first baseball video game I was truly obsessed with was All-Star Baseball 2000 for the N64 (which, counterintuitively, was released prior to the 1999 season, and thus had player stats from 1998). Here are the AL All-Stars, who also came out on top 20 years ago, by the score of 13-8:
The above stats comprise the entire 1998 season (as opposed to the mid-season snapshot from this year's charts), and on the right I have each player's home city/state/country rather than a breakdown of how they made the roster, because I didn't bother to search the interwebs for that information. Also notice that Bartolo Colon's name is in bold, because he's one of just two players who qualified for my 1998 database (200 PA for hitters, 40 IP for pitchers) to still be active 20 years later. Care to guess who the second player is? Here's a hint: he's a teammate of Colon on the Rangers...
So what the "o" in Fernando Vina's name is cut off a little bit? I changed all the other column widths to fit Mike Piazza's ridiculous three team odyssey, and also such long-winded city names like Washington Court House and San Pedro de Macoris. Speaking of the Dominican Republic, Hall of Famer Pedro Martinez was also on the AL roster - along with Aaron Sele, and also Rick Reed for the NL - but did not make it into the game for some reason (again, I'm not going to bother to check why). However, I did include those three players in the tally of astrological signs amongst 1998 All-Stars, which looks something like this:
Cancer, Scorpio - 9
Leo - 8
Sagittarius - 7
Taurus, Gemini - 5
Aries, Virgo, Libra - 4
Aquarius, Pisces, Capricorn - 2
There are some wholesale changes in the middle of the pack, but as you can see, the top and the bottom are just the same as this year. If there is such a thing as a cosmic constant, I think I might have just found it...
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