An All-Star rerun

DETROIT — If there’s anything fans back in Washington can say with certainty in the wake of baseball’s 76th All-Star Game, it is this: Game 1 of the 2005 World Series will not be at RFK Stadium.

Game 3? Check back in October to see if that impossible dream came true.

It will be the American League, however, that plays hosts to Game 1 of the Series for the fourth straight year following last night’s 7-5 win over the National League, its eighth All-Star victory in a row excluding one tie.

Apparently, the NL has yet to notice the same motto that has been thrown in the public’s face nonstop for three years: “This one counts,” meaning with the homefield advantage in the Series at stake.

Only the AL squad played like it counted last night, storming to a seven-run lead and weathering a late rally before a crowd of 41,617 at Comerica Park.

Home runs by the Baltimore Orioles’ Miguel Tejada and Anne Arundel County native Mark Teixeira paced the AL onslaught. A lack of clutch hitting doomed the NL. We won’t know until October whether that’s of concern to the Washington Nationals, whose surprising first half has put them in position to make a run at the postseason.

The Nationals’ first-ever All-Stars didn’t do a whole lot to help their cause. Staff ace Livan Hernandez was one of the evening’s many pitching victims, allowing two runs in the fourth inning. Closer Chad Cordero made the most of his one-batter appearance, striking out Detroit’s Ivan Rodriguez to end the eighth inning, much to the chagrin of the pro-Tigers crowd.

“I just wanted to take advantage of that opportunity, because it might never happen again,” the 23-year-old Cordero said. “I was very nervous the whole game, and when they called on me, I was even more nervous.”

Cordero’s one moment of glory came far too late to turn his league’s fortunes around. The NL hasn’t won one of these games since 1996, the only “semi-victory” coming in the infamous 7-7 tie of 2002.

The fireworks came early and often from the AL last night, starting with Tejada, who launched a 436-foot solo homer off Detroit native John Smoltz to open the second inning. That prodigious blast, plus a sparkling defensive play in the first inning to start a 6-4-3 double play, earned Tejada the game MVP award.

“When I go to the plate and face John Smoltz, it’s not easy,” Tejada said. “I just said in my mind, ’It’s my first time starting the All-Star Game. I’m going to enjoy it.’ ”

Tejada’s homer was only the beginning for the AL. One inning later, two singles, a walk and an RBI groundout off Houston’s Roy Oswalt produced two more runs. When Teixeira took Dontrelle Willis deep for his own two-run homer in the sixth, the rout was on.

The NL had some success at the plate but just couldn’t come up with a clutch hit through their first six scoreless innings.

That was, until Kenny Rogers made a surprise in-game appearance. The Texas Rangers lefty, vilified across the nation over the last week for his altercation with two cameramen, was widely expected to watch this game from the bullpen. But with the AL up seven runs in the seventh, manager Terry Francona called upon Rogers, who was booed lustily during his warmups.

Those boos briefly turned to cheers when Rogers served up a two-run homer to Andruw Jones, the NL’s first runs of the night. They quickly turned back to boos when Rogers got out of the rest of the inning unscathed and retreated to a dugout full of high-fives.

“I didn’t want this to be a distraction, and I hope it hasn’t been,” said Rogers, who has appealed his 20-game suspension by commissioner Bud Selig. “I hope that everything that happened, we just put our attention on the game and keep our focus on that.”

For local fans, the focus last night was not on Rogers, or for that matter on Roger Clemens (who made his latest final All-Star appearance). It was on the two Nationals pitchers selected to the NL squad.

There was some poetic symmetry when Hernandez strolled in from the bullpen to pitch the bottom of the fourth inning. Thirty-four summers ago and just one mile down the road at old Tiger Stadium, Frank Howard served as the last All-Star in Senators history. Hondo was an afterthought on that memorable night; he grounded out to second in the fifth inning in his lone at-bat, then shipped off to Texas the following year with the rest of his team.

Hernandez’s introduction last night as the first Nationals All-Star hardly drew a reaction from the crowd, which was busy (and rightly so) giving legendary Tigers announcer Ernie Harwell a standing ovation. But for long-suffering baseball fans back in the District, the sight of a player standing on the mound wearing a gray jersey with “Washington” across the front was a moment worthy of its own ovation.

Too bad Hernandez couldn’t rise to the occasion. The big right-hander surrendered two runs in his one inning, walking Jason Varitek, allowing a double down the right-field line by Brian Roberts and a two-run single by Ichiro Suzuki. Hernandez did have one moment of glory, picking off Suzuki to end the inning, but by then the damage had been done.

The AL led 5-0, well on its way to another All-Star victory. Hernandez, meanwhile, was well on his way out of town. By the time the game ended, his locker was cleaned out and he was nowhere in sight.