Home Run Derby

So if, Josh Hamilton decided to stop at say, 10 home runs in that first round (enough to advance & conserve energy) and not hit 28 bangers, then this would have been one of the most boring HR contests ever?

No real sluggers. No comment on A-dude not wanting to participate. Hometown too? Final year of Yankee Stadium. He doesn't care. I guess he had better things to do? I guess that's 'rod being rod.'

Justin Morneau wins it 5 to 3. Doesn't really get more boring than that. A few long blasts by some of the other players and that about sums it up. The 'back...back...back..back' shouting by Mark Berman is about 10 years too old and just having Joe Morgan there gives me the creeps. We all know that Joe seems to give the impression that fans don't know jack!!! Thank gosh that he didn't go into his 'detailed' explanations of the 'sluggers' swings, etc. You know what I mean.

Kind of amazed at how Josh was able to keep it up in that first round pounding one after another. You had Bradley coming over, giving him a rubdown; Big Papi running across home plate on his way to the John, bringing out a rash of 'boos' from the stands; breaking out the sharpie to sign baseballs. I mean he had all kind of distractions, yet he blasted 28 that first round. I find that amazing, but it is time to stop dwelling on his past for so long. This part of the HR Derby was the most exciting in history.

So, what do you find more exciting. Hamilton stopping at 10 HRs that first round and going on to win the contest or hitting 28 home runs that first round. Three years from now, who would remember him winning (if he did)? Nobody. Actually, I don't think that anybody really cared who won this one...even though most of us were rooting for Hamilton..... or in 10 years from now, virtually everybody will remember the 28 he hit.

Justin Morneau takes HR Derby

Jul 14. Yankee Stadium, NY - - Josh Hamilton (Rangers) carved his niche in the annals of HR Derby by blasting 28 home runs in the first round. However, after that, he seemingly ran out of Wheaties as he lost in the finals to Justin Morneau (Twins).

Nobody had ever hit 28 home runs in one round of Derby-dom before. Only one man (Bobby Abreu, with his 24 bombs in Round 1 in 2005) had ever come within 10. For that matter, Abreu was the only player in Derby history who had ever hit at least 28 homers on one night, let alone one round.

"It was amazing, all the way from home run No. 1 to home run No. 28," said Hamilton's teammate in Texas, Ian Kinsler. "It seemed like it was never going to stop." That, in fact, was exactly what it seemed like. Baseballs kept disappearing. The bedlam in the seats kept getting louder and louder. The major league baseball players watching it kept shaking their heads, pretty much in awe of what they were seeing. And they weren't the only ones, because this is what Josh Hamilton did -- in just that one round:

Josh Hamilton hit more home runs in the first round of the Derby (28) than he has through the first half of the season (21).He hit a home run on 13 swings in a row. And 16 of 17. And 20 of 22. And 22 of 25.

But mostly, he battered the right-field bleachers with one mortar after another. He hit four home runs that nearly cleared those bleachers -- and one that bonked off the bottom of the distant Bank of America sign, 502 feet from where he was standing, sending 53,716 witnesses into complete apoplexy. "He hit that sign," said Kinsler, "and that ball just disappeared. And it was like it was gone forever. I kept looking at that sign, and I was thinking, `There's not a chance I could probably hit that thing from second base." But incredibly, that wasn't even Hamilton's longest home run of that round. There was also a towering 504-footer that plopped into the last row of the bleachers, even farther out toward center field. And there was a 518-foot Mars mission that landed so high up in the third deck, you felt like it might have thumped off the top of the Empire State Building if he'd smoked it in Manhattan.

Even Hamilton had a special feeling for that shot, because it was the closest he came to fulfilling his pre-Derby prediction that he might be able to hit the first fair ball in history ever to completely leave Yankee Stadium.