MLB.com

The All-Star Game has a way of contradicting common wisdom, and the 1996 Midsummer Classic would be no different.

As it happened, neither pitching staff issued a walk, an All-Star Game record. The American League could only manage seven hits, and the seven AL players with 20 or more home runs at the break went a combined 3 for 14 (.214). And despite the National League’s eventual 6-0 triumph, the American League pitchers more than held their own - eight National Leaguers were retired on strikes, four at the hands of California’s Chuck Finley.

The 1996 Midsummer Classic was more than simply a rare pitcher's game in a hitters year, however. For Philadelphia baseball fans, it was a chance to celebrate the old and the new - this was the fourth All-Star game played at Philadelphia - and a chance to recognize some of the men who had filled this historic city with countless historic baseball moments over the years.

Five of Philadelphia's finest - Richie Ashburn, Jim Bunning, Steve Carlton, Robin Roberts and Mike Schmidt - were on hand to throw out five ceremonial first pitches. In a gesture that reminded everyone why Philadelphia is called the City of Brotherly Love, two of baseball greatest shortstops - Ozzie Smith, who bedeviled the Phillies for almost two decades and who would retires after the 1996 season, and Cal Ripken, Jr., the iron man who handled the final chance in the Phillies 1983 World Series loss to the Baltimore Orioles - were both received warmly by the partisan crowd.

Even Toronto's Joe Carter, whose home run in the sixth game of the 1993 World Series ended the Phillies most recent brush with a World Championship, smiled broadly when his introduction brought a chorus of boos from the Philadelphia crowd.

The most poignant story of the evening, however, belonged to Mike Piazza. The 27-year -old native of Norristown, who was a big Phillies fan as a child, was called on to catch one of those first pitches - specifically, the one from his boyhood hero, Mike Schmidt. Spurred on by that emotional meeting, the Dodger All-Star promptly went out and homered and doubled to earn MVP honors in front of his hometown fans.

"The words are hard to express," said an emotional Piazza after the game. "For something like this to happen in Philadelphia is just unbelievable."

What a game, indeed.