Imagine aspiring to be a professional baseball player from the year you were born. Imagine working tirelessly to get there, rising through the ranks, and breaking through to the big leagues at age 24. Imagine improving to the point where you're a top Rookie of the Year candidate and then, a couple of years later, raking throughout the first half of the season and earning All-Star recognition because of your performance.
And then, imagine not seeing a single second of action in the All-Star Game once you finally get there. A little bit anticlimactic, no? But that was the harsh reality for then-up-and-coming outfielder Hunter Pence, who was one of two players from the bottom-of-the-barrel Houston Astros that made the squad in 2009 (the other was Miguel Tejada). For Pence, it was the moment of a lifetime... one which would soon become fairly disappointing.
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He recalled his debut All-Star appearance, the first of four in his career, on the latest episode of "Baseball Barista."
"The first All-Star Game that I played in, I was the only player that didn't get to play," Pence said, referring to the 2009 Midsummer Classic in which the NL team was managed by Phillies skipper Charlie Manuel. "He played everyone but me. I was in the cage getting ready, getting ready, getting ready. Everybody but me played. And I remember I was pissed.
"...Like, I couldn't believe that I was an All-Star, like it was so surreal. I had no idea if I was going to get to go to a couple more. Literally, in my mind as the young Hunter, I was like, 'I am going to kill the Phillies every year,' and I went berserk. I was so freakin' pissed whenever we would play the Phillies because of that. Little did I know that that played out really well for me — because I played so well against the Phillies, they traded for me."
Manuel's Phillies acquired Pence at the trade deadline in 2011, looking to make a splash in their push for another World Series title. Pence had been an All-Star for another lowly Houston team that season, too, and he had loved playing in a game that would actually have an impact on the World Series. The National League ultimately won, which would have helped the Phillies had they gone to the World Series that year... but that didn't matter seeing as Philadelphia came up short, nor did Pence know he'd be in Philadelphia a few weeks after the Midsummer Classic.
In his brief career with the Phillies, Pence had 28 home runs, 94 RBI and a .289/.357/.486 slash line across 155 games while also getting his first taste of postseason baseball. As far as we know, Pence's "beef" with Manuel over his All-Star Game no-show didn't factor into his time in Philly, and probably wasn't a "beef" at all, but it's a fun story nonetheless.
Later in his career — a decade later, in fact — Pence would once again be named to an All-Star team but not take the field. However, he was much less angry about it that time around.
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