Giancarlo Stanton wins MVP, powers American League to 9th straight All-Star Game win

The first All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium in 42 years featured Clayton Kershaw starting in front of the home fans and appearances from Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera, but the final score looked all too familiar: The American League won 3-2 for its ninth straight All-Star victory and 21st in the past 25 Midsummer Classics.

The game turned in the fourth inning when Giancarlo Stanton and Byron Buxton delivered back-to-back home runs off the Los Angeles Dodgers' Tony Gonsolin. Neither was cheated with their swings. Stanton's game-tying two-run shot was a 457-foot blast to left-center — longer than any home run hit at Dodger Stadium in the first half of the season. Buxton followed with a 425-foot home run down the left-field line, the seventh time in All-Star history with back-to-back home runs.

Stanton, making his first All-Star appearance for the New York Yankees since they acquired him from the Miami Marlins before the 2018 season, won MVP honors with his first All-Star hit; he had gone 0-for-6 in his previous games.

Stanton is now one of five players to win a league MVP Award, a Home Run Derby and an All-Star Game MVP, joining Ken Griffey Jr., Miguel Tejada, Cal Ripken Jr. and Dave Parker. Stanton also is the third Yankees player to win All-Star MVP; Derek Jeter (2000) and Mariano Rivera (2013) are the others.

Stanton's Yankees career has been up and down, including missing most of the 2019 and 2020 seasons with injuries, but he has 24 home runs at the break, a key part of a deep Yankees team that has a chance to beat the franchise record of 114 wins set in 1998.

American League pitchers held National League batters hitless from the second through the seventh innings, just the fourth time in All-Star history a team went