The All-Star break was a welcome respite from some of the gloomy stories that clouded the first half of the baseball season -- the record rate of strikeouts and low batting averages, grip substances, the long list of injuries to star players that ended with Ronald Acuna Jr.'s season-ending torn ACL.
For a couple of days the focus shifted completely to Shohei Ohtani, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr. and some of the other remarkable first-half performers. Not a word about Spider Tack. Heck, the American League even won the All-Star Game while recording just three strikeouts, the lowest total for a winning team since 1962.