PHILADELPHIA — Two days after the American League shut out the National League 4-0 in the All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park, the National League said Thursday that it was still attempting to reach second base, and that a survey party that set out from first base Wednesday morning had made it about 34 feet before turning back.
The AL won Tuesday’s game behind Dylan Cease and 10 relievers, who combined on a three-hitter. The NL’s three hits were singles, by Juan Soto, Pete Crow-Armstrong, and Otto Lopez, and the league did not advance a runner past first base. Pitchers on both sides combined for 27 strikeouts. It was the AL’s 18th win in the last 23 All-Star Games.
The NL’s newly formed Base Advancement Working Group, which convened in a stairwell beneath the stadium about 40 minutes after the final out, issued a one-sentence statement that read, in full: “We just couldn’t get anything going.” Asked by the Reporter what, specifically, the league had been unable to get going, a member of the working group who asked to be identified only as a volunteer said, “The going part. Toward second.”
“We know where second base is in a general sense. Everyone has seen it on television,” said the volunteer, who was standing on first base at Citizens Bank Park on Thursday morning with a clipboard and a canteen. “It’s the next one. That’s as far as the maps go.” The working group’s first expedition left first base at 7:10 a.m. Wednesday with a two-day supply of sunflower seeds, a compass, and a rosin bag, and made steady progress across the infield dirt until about the 34-foot mark, where the party reported that it could no longer see first base behind it and did not like that. It returned to first at 9:45 a.m. A second expedition, launched Thursday, was roped together and carrying a flag. As of press time, it had reached the edge of the baseline and was waiting for someone to wave it in.
The working group has asked the AL for directions. The AL has offered them, but the NL said it intends to reach second base “the National League way,” which the volunteer described as “slowly, and with a bunt, and possibly in extra innings.”
Prof. Desmond Achterberg, who holds the Prewitt Chair in Comparative Annoyance at Ellery State University, said the league’s difficulty has historical precedent. “The scholarship is clear that second base was the last of the bases to be discovered,” Achterberg said. “First base was always there. Third base was found by accident, by people looking for home. But second base was a theory for most of the 19th century, and there are scholars, well, one scholar, who still regard it as a rumor.”
Asked whether the league had considered hitting a double, which would place a runner on second base directly, the volunteer said the idea had come up in a meeting and was “very exciting” but “not where we are as an organization right now.”
The working group said it would try again Friday, nerves permitting. Groundskeepers at Citizens Bank Park confirmed Thursday afternoon that second base was still where they left it, and that no one from the National League had called.