One Strike Away

He was one strike away.

"I looked for a fastball on the first pitch, got it and fouled it off," Young said. "Then I looked for a changeup on the second pitch, got it and fouled that off. I figured that thinking was doing me no good whatsoever. So I just wanted to see the ball and make contact."

This was the kind of situation that had made Trevor Hoffman the future Hall of Famer he is. No balls. Two strikes. His time. His count. He has run up 30 0-and-2 counts so far in the regular season. The guys he's run them against are 2-for-30.

But this time, his catcher, Atlanta's Brian McCann, had a feeling Young was looking changeup. So he called for an 0-2 fastball.

Young roped it toward the mighty Allegheny. And you could feel the forces of the universe shifting.

Hoffman admitted afterward he might be thinking about the changeup he didn't throw for a long, long time.

"It's something I might contemplate tonight,'' Hoffman said. "You've gotta go with your bread and butter, and my 86-mph hour heater isn't going to scare too many people sometimes.''

But then again, there isn't much of anything that scares Michael Young, a man who will never again float below anyone's radar screen.

Once upon a time, as a kid, Young read a book on hitting by the great Ted Williams. It was a book that changed his career, he said. It was a book that helped teach him how to hit.

But Michael Young also knew that Ted Williams was no author. He was the greatest hitter of his day, and maybe any day. And he was a hitter who once smoked an All-Star Game home run that turned a game, and a country, upside down -- a home run so famous that even a 29-year-old shortstop from Texas still remembers "everything" about it.

"I remember the swing," Young said. "I remember the hop down the line. I remember him jump when he got past first. I remember the whole thing. I think it might have been DiMaggio waiting for him at the plate, shaking his hand. See, I've got the whole thing."

And now that's not all he's got. He's got an All-Star Game memory for the ages. He's got a highlight reel some other All-Star might find himself recalling at some other locker 20 or 40 or 65 years from now. And for now, Michael Young has a hit on his resume that no one else who ever played in any All-Star Game can match.

Because his team was one strike away.