ATLANTA — The 2025 MLB All-Star Game featured the two best pitchers in the world on the mound to start for their respective leagues and the two best position players in the opposing lineups. It included the first automatic ball-strike system challenges in All-Star Game history, a rousing six-run comeback, a memorable appearance for a future first-ballot Hall of Famer and a beautiful tribute to the late Hank Aaron just miles from where he surpassed Babe Ruth on the career home run list.

But the exhibition, a remarkable show played at Truist Park on a muggy Tuesday night, will be remembered for how it ended.

When it was over, nearly four hours after the first pitch, the National League outlasted the American League behind Philadelphia Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber in an unprecedented Home Run Derby-style swing-off, with a 4-3 homer edge after the score was tied at 6-6 through nine innings.

Schwarber pulverized three home runs on three swings in the swing-off after going 0-for-2 with a walk during the nine innings, becoming the first position player to win All-Star Game MVP without recording a hit in the game.

The American League leads the National League in the All-Star Game, with a record of 48 wins, 44 losses and 2 ties.

Officially, the result, just the Senior Circuit’s second victory in the past 12 matchups, didn’t have a winning or losing pitcher of record. Unofficially, it was one of the most enthralling endings to any marquee baseball game, exhibition or not.

“It’s like wiffle ball in the backyard,” AL manager Aaron Boone said.

The tiebreaker, a baseball version of a hockey shootout, was established in 2022. On Monday, both managers — Boone and the NL’s Dave Roberts — were required to submit their list of participants and alternates to MLB should the game need the swing-off after nine innings. Knowing starters usually shower and leave the ballpark well before the end of the game, the managers opted for reserves.

The exercise again appeared to be unnecessary once the NL took a 6-0 lead — fueled by New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso‘s three-run homer — into the seventh inning. But the AL scored four runs in the seventh and tied the game when down to its last out in the ninth to send the 95th All-Star Game to the swing-off.

“Dave asked yesterday, ‘If there’s a tie, would you do it?'” said Schwarber, the only member of the Phillies who participated in this year’s All-Star festivities. “I said, ‘Absolutely,’ not thinking that we were going to end up in a tie when you say yes. And then as the game’s going, you’re looking at the score, you’re not really thinking the game’s going to end in a tie.”

But even that process prompted brief confusion. Roberts originally selected Schwarber, Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez and Alonso, a two-time Home Run Derby champion. But Suarez, who was hit on his left hand by a pitch in the eighth inning, was scratched after being announced and replaced by Miami Marlins outfielder Kyle Stowers.

Boone countered with Athletics designated hitter Brent Rooker, Seattle Mariners outfielder Randy Arozarena and Tampa Bay Rays first baseman Jonathan Aranda.

Los Angeles Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel threw for the NL. New York Yankees first-base coach Travis Chapman assumed the pressure-packed duty for the AL.

Finally, the rules: Each player was granted three swings and an unlimited number of pitches to take them.

Rooker, the only participant to also take part in Monday’s Home Run Derby, led off with two homers. Stowers followed with one. Arozarena then extended the AL’s lead to 3-1, setting the stage for Schwarber.

Schwarber, a man seemingly built to smash baseballs over the wall, has never won a Home Run Derby. He lost in the finals in 2018 and failed to advance out of the first round in 2022; he hasn’t entered another one since. On Tuesday, however, he did not falter.

The three-time All-Star, after building some drama with a delayed emergence from the NL dugout, crushed three home runs, drawing louder and louder reactions with each one. The first was a 428-foot laser that traveled 107 mph to straightaway center. Next, he cracked a 461-foot, 109 mph moon shot to right field. He finished the spree with a 382-foot dinger, dropping down to one knee as the ball soared into the right-field seats and eliciting a rambunctious reaction from his temporary teammates.

“I think the first swing was kind of the big one,” Schwarber said. “I was just really trying to hit a line drive versus trying to hit the home run. Usually, that tends to work out, especially in games.”

The pressure shifted to Aranda. Needing one homer to tie, Aranda lifted a fly ball to the warning track before clanking a ball off the top of the brick wall in right field. His last swing produced a weak fly ball to left field, giving the NL the win at eight minutes to midnight.

“First time in history we got to do this,” Roberts said, “and I think it played pretty well tonight.”

By then, the early talk of the night was old news.

This year’s exhibition was the first game at the major league level outside of spring training to feature the automated ball-strike system, an expected precursor to MLB implementing the arrangement for all games beginning next season.

The rules on Tuesday were the same as the ABS challenge rules introduced during spring training. Each team received two challenges for the game. Only the pitcher, catcher or batter could request a challenge, and the request needed to be immediate without help from the dugout or other players on the field.

Five pitches were challenged Tuesday. The first was an 0-2 changeup that AL starter Tarik Skubal threw to San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado that plate umpire Dan Iassogna called a ball in the first inning. Skubal and his catcher, Cal Raleigh of the Mariners, didn’t agree and challenged the pitch to make history. The call was overturned, ending Machado’s at-bat with a strikeout.

“I wasn’t even going to use them,” Skubal said. “But I felt like that was a strike, and you want that in an 0-2 count.”

Skubal became the first Detroit Tigers pitcher to start an All-Star Game since Max Scherzer in 2013. Opposite him was the other Cy Young favorite.

A year after starting the All-Star Game for the NL with 11 career outings on his résumé, Pittsburgh Pirates sensation Paul Skenes received the nod again to become the 10th pitcher to start consecutive All-Star Games and the first to accomplish the feat in his first two seasons. Last year, in Texas, Skenes walked one batter in his scoreless inning, a blip that he said “pissed me off” and pushed him to attack hitters for his All-Star Game encore.

“I was throwing every pitch as hard as I could,” Skenes said, “hoping that it landed in the strike zone.”

The result: two strikeouts on 100 mph fastballs to Tigers teammates Gleyber Torres and Riley Greene to open the contest. Skenes admittedly reached back seeking to strike out the side, but Yankees slugger Aaron Judge grounded out on another 100 mph pitch to conclude Skenes’ night.

“That’s what the All-Star Game’s for,” Skenes said. “Every hitter’s trying to hit a home run. We’re trying to strike everybody out.”

In a fitting transition, 11-time All-Star Clayton Kershaw relieved Skenes, 14 years his junior, in the second inning.

Raleigh, Tuesday’s Home Run Derby champion, welcomed the Dodgers’ Kershaw with a 101.9 mph line drive that Chicago Cubs left-fielder Kyle Tucker snagged with a sliding catch. Kershaw then struck out the Toronto Blue Jays‘ Vladimir Guerrero Jr. looking at an 87 mph slider on his sixth pitch, prompting Roberts to emerge from the NL dugout to take the ball from Kershaw and end what could have been the final All-Star Game appearance of his Hall of Fame career.

A legend selection for the game by commissioner Rob Manfred, Kershaw delivered a pregame speech in the NL clubhouse.

“We have the best All-Star Game of any sport,” said Kershaw, who on July 2 became the 20th pitcher to record 3,000 career strikeouts. “We do have the best product. So to be here, to realize your responsibility in the sport, is important. And we have Shohei [Ohtani] here. We have Aaron Judge here. We have all these guys that represent the game really, really well, so we get to showcase that and be part of that is important. I just said I was super honored to be a part of it.”

In the end, Kershaw was part of something never seen before.

ATLANTA — Major League Baseball honored late Hall of Famer Hank Aaron by re-creating his record-breaking 715th home run through the use of projection mapping and pyrotechnics during Tuesday night’s All-Star Game.

After the sixth inning, the lights went down at Truist Park and fans stood holding their cellphone lights. The scene from April 8, 1974, at the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was projected on the infield and shown on the video board.

The high-tech images of Aaron and other players were seen before a blaze of a fireball launched from home plate to signify the homer that pushed Aaron past Babe Ruth’s then-record of 714 homers.

Aaron’s widow, Billye Aaron, stood and waved as the cheers from the sellout crowd of 41,702 grew louder.

National League players warmed up for the game in batting practice jerseys with Aaron’s No. 44 on the back

One year ago, MLB celebrated the 50th anniversary of Aaron’s homer with announcements for a new statue at Baseball’s Hall of Fame and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

Commissioner Rob Manfred also helped honor Aaron in Atlanta last year by joining the Braves in announcing the $100,000 endowment of a scholarship at Tuskegee University, a historically Black university in Aaron’s home state of Alabama.

Manfred noted the Henry Louis Aaron Fund, launched by the Braves following Aaron’s death in 2021, and the Chasing the Dream Foundation, created by Aaron and his wife, were designed to clear paths for minorities in baseball and to encourage educational opportunities.

Aaron hit 755 home runs from 1954 to 1976, a mark that stood until Barry Bonds reached 762 in 2007 during baseball’s steroid era.

Aaron was elected to the Hall in 1982. A 25-time All-Star, he set a record with 2,297 RBIs. He continues to hold the records of 1,477 extra-base hits and 6,856 total bases.

ATLANTA — Clutching the glass bat given to the All-Star Game MVP, Kyle Schwarber walked through the National League clubhouse and chuckled to himself: He had just won the award without registering a single hit in the game.

“One good BP wins you a trophy these days,” Schwarber said.

What happened Tuesday night at the All-Star Game was unlike anything in the 94 versions that preceded it. Thanks to a rule change three years ago, baseball unveiled its version of penalty kicks in soccer or a shootout in hockey: Break a tie after nine innings via a Home Run Derby-style swing-off. And there was perhaps no one on the planet better to meet the moment than Schwarber, the Philadelphia Phillies slugger, who homered on all three of his swings in the impromptu batting practice session to propel the NL to the win (6-6, with a 4-3 edge in homers) in the Midsummer Classic.

For an All-Star Game that has grown relatively stale in recent years, larded with pitching changes and substitutions, the swing-off lent it an air of freshness and excitement. Amid all of the oddities — Atlanta Braves fans at a sold-out Truist Park cheering on a star from their hated rival, New York Mets players urging on Schwarber, all of it against the backdrop of the NL blowing a 6-0 lead — the one constant was Schwarber playing hero at a time of import.

As the American League blitzed back from a half-dozen-run deficit, the possibility of the swing-off was tantalizingly close — not just for the wide swath of fans who hadn’t known that Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association had agreed to a sudden-death All-Star Game derby, but for the players who had stuck around until the end of the game to bear witness to a contest teeming with pressure — particularly for an exhibition.

The rules were simple: NL manager Dave Roberts and AL manager Aaron Boone selected three players and one alternate to take three swings. The team with the most home runs wins the game. As nice as it would have been for Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge to participate, when they made their choices in the days leading up to the game, both managers selected players they anticipated would be warm from finishing on the field: Schwarber, Mets first baseman Pete Alonso and Diamondbacks third baseman Eugenio Suarez for the NL, countering Brent Rooker of the A’s, Mariners outfielder Randy Arozarena and Tampa Bay first baseman Jonathan Aranda.

Late in the game, with the possibility of a tie three outs away, Los Angeles Dodgers bench coach Danny Lehmann approached Marlins outfielder Kyle Stowers and told him if the game did indeed go extra innings, he would need to hit for Suarez, who was removed from the game after being hit by a 100 mph pitch on his hand.

“You’re f—ing with me,” Stowers said.

“No, I’m seriously not,” Lehmann said. “This is real.”

“You’re kidding,” Stowers said.

“I’m serious,” Lehmann said.

“I thought I was the young guy getting teased,” Stowers later said. “Lo and behold, after the game ends, the managers meet up. And I think, ‘This might be for real.'”

Boone and Roberts had a finite group from which to choose. Around half the players were gone from the stadium, already headed home after a long, hot week here. Those who stuck around were rewarded with an urgent, entertaining gimmick that put players in a crucible, cranked the temperature and challenged them not to melt.

The format differed from the Home Run Derby the previous night, during which Seattle catcher Cal Raleigh won a contest that required stamina to make it through minuteslong rounds. The swing-off was different — reminiscent of the bonus rounds in the Derby during which fans get to admire home runs without the specter of another ball flying off the bat soon thereafter.

Ohtani wasn’t there. Neither was Judge. And it didn’t really matter, because the players were undeniably into the results, the sort of reaction that lent credibility to the format. After the AL tied the game on an infield hit from Steve Kwan with two outs and two strikes in the ninth, reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal — already in the clubhouse and in his street clothes — and Kansas City left-hander Kris Bubic were happy to follow the lead of Minnesota right-hander Joe Ryan, who said: “We gotta go out and watch this.”

They saw a show. And showmanship. And a comeback from a 2-1 deficit after Rooker hit two of his three swings out and Stowers parked one home run. And of course it was delivered by the ultimate showman, Schwarber. The 32-year-old introduced himself a decade ago with five home runs in his first postseason and then equaled that number in the 2023 NL Championship Series. All told, he has 21 homers in 69 postseason games. This was nothing, Schwarber being Schwarber, launching titanic shots in the most opportune of scenarios.

Even though he never takes batting practice on the field, Schwarber was perfectly thrilled to break that habit for the sake of the NL. With Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel throwing, Schwarber used a brand-new bat — a 99 mph Aroldis Chapman sinker had broken his lumber in the ninth inning — and then lined his first swing over the fence to center field. He followed with a high parabola 461 feet into right-center. His final swing was classic Schwarber, taking him down to his back knee, as if he were proposing the swing-off end right there with his third home run, down the right-field line.

It didn’t, not officially: Aranda, one of the breakout hitters of the first half, stepped up and proceeded to hit one ball off Truist Park’s brick wall in the outfield. He didn’t come close to a home run with two others. NL players rejoiced around Schwarber, leaving Alonso with nothing to do but celebrate the win.

“I don’t think I’d like that in-season if we lost on it,” San Diego Padres reliever Jason Adam said. “But for this setting, it was awesome.”

Almost everyone in both clubhouses shared Adam’s sentiment. The exigency of a limited-swing Derby — and the difficulty in going from game to batting practice with essentially a moment’s notice — transfixed players. And the audience, though understandably lamenting the absenteeism of some of the game’s biggest stars, mostly embraced the idea as novelty done right.

“There’s probably a world where you could see that in the future, where maybe it’s in some regular-season mix,” Boone said. “I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if people start talking about it like that. Obviously, I don’t think that should happen, necessarily, or would at any time in the near future. But I’ve got to say, it was pretty exciting.”

Already Tuesday had offered an All-Star Game filled with firsts. The inclusion of the automated ball-strike challenge system saw borderline ball-strike calls overturned by a simple tap on the head. Amid an outing in which he threw nine of his 18 pitches at 100-plus mph, rookie sensation Jacob Misiorowski unleashed an ungodly 98.1 mph slider so nasty it awed players in both dugouts.

In the end, it was an electric night for baseball, with Schwarber serving as the conduit. And when Jon Shestakofsky of the National Baseball Hall of Fame went to collect the bat Schwarber used to go 3-for-3 — a decade after Schwarber gave the Hall his bat used to collect the MVP award of the Futures Game — he noticed not a single scratch or sign that the bat had even been used.

“No ball marks when you flush it,” Schwarber said.

He had indeed — and in the process lent validity to the idea that the swing-off could be an entertaining way to cap All-Star week. Players around both clubhouses said they would consider signing up for the swing-off next year — and Stowers said the swing-off made him want to participate in the Home Run Derby in the future. The champion of this year’s Derby was perfectly content to share the spotlight with Schwarber.

“It’s good for the game, it’s good for baseball, it’s good for the fans,” Raleigh said.

And that’s the point, right? All of the consternation over Misiorowski making the NL team after just 25⅔ major league innings ignored a fundamental element of All-Star week — as much as it’s to reward the players, it’s to grow the game’s fandom, too.

Tuesday’s swing-off was baseball balm, surprisingly comforting, and sent the game into its second half with momentum. The trade deadline will provide that tension for the next two weeks and pennant races thereafter. The game is in a good place because it is evermore the realm of the unforeseen and unknowable.

We might not get many of these — only 13 past Midsummer Classics have gone to extra innings — which will only increase its charm, allowing the swing-off to become the most pleasant of surprises. As we saw Tuesday, there is glory in the pressure, the stress, the thrill of knowing you’ve got only three swings. It’s a beautiful little distillation of baseball, exceptional in portioned doses.