This is part eight of a ten part series looking at the greatest All Star moments in Brewer history. To recap, here are the seven we've already covered:
3. Prince Fielder's pinch hit double in 2009.
4. Dan Plesac's scoreless seventh inning in 1987's 13 inning game.
5. Ben Sheets' start and two scoreless innings in 2008.
6. Ted Simmons' pinch-hit RBI single in 1981.
7. Prince Fielder's Home Run Derby win in 2009 (with video).
8. Trevor Hoffman's five-pitch sixth inning in 2010.
9. Dan Plesac's eighth inning strikeout of Darryl Strawberry in 1988.
10. Ben Sheets' scoreless third inning in 2007.
If you haven't already figured it out, let me make something moderately clear for you: There haven't been a lot of exceptional moments featuring Brewers in the All Star game. In the 40+ years of Brewer franchise history, there have only been 17 times where a Brewer had a positive WPA in the game. Only two of those came in the 1970's, and both of those were 1978.
The 1978 season was easily the best of pitcher Lary Sorensen's four years in Milwaukee. In his second major league season, he posted a 3.21 ERA over 280.2 innings, completing 17 games and pitching three shutouts. He had thrown complete games in eleven of his last thirteen starts entering the All Star break, and was holding opposing batters to a .253/.292/.320 line.
On this day he was called upon to pitch the fourth inning in relief of Matt Keough. He allowed the first batter he faced to reach (Larry Bowa, on an infield single), then retired the next nine in order. By WPA he was the AL's MVP for the game.
Sorensen left the game in the top of the seventh, when fellow Brewer Larry Hisle pinch hit for him. Like Sorensen, Hisle was in the middle of a career year: He was a .290/.374/.533 hitter, would hit 34 home runs over 142 games and was on his way to a third place finish in the AL MVP vote. He legged out an infield single off of Rollie Fingers, but was forced out on a fielder's choice on the next play.
The NL would go on to score four runs in the eighth and win the game 7-3.