Their shining moment quickly faded. The story of the 1980 All-Star Game starting pitchers.
LOS ANGELES — The way the clouds never formed in an ocean blue sky, the way the afternoon sun hit the San Gabriel Mountains, the way one of baseball's truest cathedrals was dropped right into the center of it — this was Dodger Stadium at its heavenliest.
"It was a postcard," Dodgers first baseman Steve Garvey said.
More than 36 million people — roughly one in every six Americans — received that postcard when they watched the 1980 All-Star Game on TV. Another 56,088 were in the stands.
"Everything was just perfect," Seattle Mariners pitcher Rick Honeycutt remembered.
And in the middle of the idyllic setting, two men celebrated everything that they'd achieved on a square foot of rubber. The game's starting pitchers, Baltimore's Steve Stone and Houston's J.R. Richard, were at the pinnacle of their profession.
Only this pinnacle, it wasn't much of a plateau — this Tuesday in July 42 years ago, it was more of a ledge.
"If you are an aware person, if you understand this particular incarnation that we're going through, there's nothing promised to us. We're here for a finite period of time," Stone said recently. "We live the life to the best of our ability. But nobody can tell you what's going to happen
