10 best MLB All-Star moments

Torii Hunter robs Bonds, Bonds picks Hunter up over shoulder

From the emotional and sentimental to the fun we also appreciate about All-Star Games.

I can’t write a gushing review of this moment because it just doesn’t fit. Of course this game also produced the infamous tie, which led to the also infamous, unpopular and downright faulty decision by Major League Baseball to award homefield advantage in the World Series to the league who captures the All-Star Game.

What can be said ever so briefly is a notion of context. At the time, Barry Bonds had more or less taken the torch from Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa as baseball’s power hitting king. At his most popular, he was always far less relatable and enjoyable than “Big Mac” or “Slammin Sammy”.

But, at least for one relatively brief moment, he was able to make himself seem the slightest bit likeable when after being robbed of an All-Star Game home run by one of the most spectacular defensive centerfielders the game will ever see, Torii Hunter, he met Hunter as the acrobatic Twin made his way back to the American League dugout.

Bonds played, perhaps knowingly, or perhaps unknowingly on his bully persona by picking up Hunter, though it was in jest and done with a smile. The moment carried with a hint of irony

Never before, and never after—unless you were a San Francisco Giants fan—would Bonds seem as likeable as he did in this moment. And it came on home run he just missed out on.

Maybe I’m reading too much into it (I probably am). Or maybe Bonds’ actual finest moment came at the least opportune time.

Next: From a home run just missed to one absolutely not missed, at all