All Star Roundup

I just wanted to throw out a congratulations to the Clinton LumberKings on a great show last night. Also, I would like to discuss the technology (or magic) that you used last night to keep the rain away from Alliant Energy Field. How in the HECK did you do that?

Maybe it was the line I heard on press row last night...Jamie Pedroza is the grand marshall of the hit parade...I couldn't concentrate for a couple of innings after I heard that one.

Anyway.....

Here are the stories from the Hometown paper:

Organizers poke it out of the park

East All-Stars beat West

LumberKings help West All-Stars battle to the end

From the kinda hometown papers:

Bandits backstop Cutler rolls with changes

All-Star Game notebook (with video)

All-Star Game more than just 9 innings

Jayson Marten, a freckle-faced 9-year old from Oshkosh, Wis., will tell you.

So will 65-years-young Roger McLean of Aurora, Ill.

The Midwest League All-Star Game is more than nine innings of baseball.

It's an event.

The league's 45th annual all-star game started at 7 p.m. Tuesday night at Alliant Energy Field, but fans arrived on the Clinton riverfront long before Kane County's Kenney Smalley threw the game's first pitch.

Marten took a few cuts in the T-ball home run derby that was among a number of youth-friendly games that were part of the Principal Family Fun Fest.

"This is pretty awesome," said Marten, who had his eye on heading to a rock-climbing wall with an older brother. "There is a lot to do."

I saw a few Timber Rattlers fans in the stands. Hope they had a good time. At least I am guessing that a family from Oshkosh would be fans of the Timber Rattlers.

This 0-fer doesn't bother Bandits' Cutler

Cubs prospect Vitters meeting high expectations

Fort Wayne made it over

TinCaps make mark at All-Star

Jeff Johnson has blog posts with pictures and video

And the MiLB.com coverage:

Bourquin's blast carries East to win

Notebook with this:

Stop us if you've heard this one before -- a top prospect named Gordon comes into his first Midwest League season, tears up the competition and earns a nod to the league's annual All-Star Game in Clinton.

It's a case of deja vu all over again for devoted Midwest League fans, a familiar story told 21 summers ago in places like Appleton, Wisc., and Waterloo, Iowa. The towns on the map have changed, but the story itself is remarkably the same. In 1988, Tom Gordon took the field in Clinton for the league's annual midsummer classic as a hot prospect on a tear. This year, his son, Dee, will do the same, representing the Great Lakes Loons as the starting shortstop for the East Division.

Tom Gordon was an Appleton Fox in that 1988 All-Star Game.

Brett Lawrie's position switch is covered in the notebook, too.

Either one of those MiLB.com links will take you to a photo gallery...a pretty lame photo gallery...with one shot of game action, three shots from Monday, and a post-game handshake for the Star of Stars.