PHILADELPHIA – It’s been 30 years since the All-Star Game came to the City of Brotherly Love, and back then, when the Philadelphia Phillies called the now long-ago demolished Veterans Stadium home, the Home Run Derby wasn’t quite the event it was now.
The All-Star Game, rightfully, held more a lot more sway back then and probably still does, but the Home Run Derby has become at least as large an event as the Midsummer Classic. And sure, the Home Run Derby isn’t a baseball game, but it is fun to watch.
Twenty years ago, a buddy and I ventured out to Pittsburgh and went to the Derby at PNC Park, one of the best settings for a Major League Baseball event of any kind and got in for, if memory serves, under $200.
This year, I would not be so lucky. The combination of the event’s return to one of the country’s most sports-mad cities along with the participation of the two Phillies’ power hitters, Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, drove demand for Derby ducats to levels I couldn’t have anticipated. Nor, I guess, did I consider that the slide towards irrelevance of the All-Star Game itself, which used to provide fans with a chance to see matchups they could only dream about in the years before interleague play, but has less gravitas than it used to as both MLB teams and the game’s best pitchers do their best to avoid having the best pitchers actually pitch in the game.
I ventured down to Citizen’s Bank Park around 5 p.m. Monday, having downloaded various apps used to resell tickets. After looking for a friend from high school’s tailgate with no luck and in need of some cooler air, I went to Stateside Live, the concert venue/restaurant/bar across the street from the ballpark where hordes of fans, most of them clad in Phillies gear, were enjoying food and libations in advance of the fireworks.
With a Miller Lite and an order of the world famous crab fries from Chickie & Pete’s in front of me, I settled in to feverishly refresh StubHub… And Seat Geek… And Vivid Seats. And Gametime. And TickPick. Gotta have all the bases covered, you know?
Earlier in the day, a single ticket for the Home Run Derby had dropped down to the $700 range, so I felt relatively confident that a ticket would hit the market at a relatively reasonable price. Boy, was I ever wrong.
It was around 6:45 p.m., and having finished my crab fries (which, by the way, are fantastic) and a Miller Lite, I began to more feverishly refresh the various ticket resale apps, only to see that a single ticket had somehow risen in price from around $950 to more than $1,300 in less than an hour.
But nevertheless, I persisted. Refresh, refresh, refresh. What if I try for two tickets? I could resell one… hopefully. I kept trying for a single ticket – any single ticket. I moved outside around 7:30 p.m., where I was joined at a table by Patti from Haddonfield, N.J., just across the river. She was hoping to get in for less than $400, but couldn’t get anything from a scalper for less than $600, so I kept refreshing the apps, but even as it got closer to the Derby’s 8 p.m. start time, ticket prices didn’t really go down. I wondered if that rumored tunnel from the Holiday Inn to Veterans Stadium
Having finished another Miller Lite, I walked across the street to the front gate of the ballpark, in time to hear the Star Spangled Banner and see the flyover before heading back to the subway.
Less than 15 minutes later, I got out at City Hall and looked up at the 37-foot tall statue of William Penn high above Center City. I walked back to my hotel and clicked on Netflix, grumbling to myself a bit that the Home Run Derby, an event that perhaps does the single-best job of marketing MLB’s best players and their personalities, was behind a paywall on a streaming service rather than available for free where – heaven forfend – children might watch it, enjoy it, and want to watch more baseball.
By the time I was back in Center City, there were fewer than 10 tickets to be found on the various apps, and none for less than $1,000.
Contentedly, I watched on Netflix, swing after swing, homer after homer, until Jordan Walker of the St. Louis Cardinals and Kyle Schwarber of the Phillies reached the finals.
When Walker stepped up to the plate, the Philly crowd loudly booed him.
Can you blame them?
Schwarber hit 11 homers to open the finals, and the hometown crowd wanted to see their guy win.
Down to his final swing and trailing by three with the magenta balls coming into play, Walker clubbed three homers, tying Schwarber before launching the winning homer with one swing remaining over the left field wall and into history. In all, Walker, the first Cardinal to win the Home Run Derby, homered on his final six swings to take the crown.
And while it would’ve been nice to have been in the ballpark, the Derby’s format lends itself to tv, and I’ve still got $1,000 or so dollars in the bank.
Photo: Philadelphia Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber greets St. Louis Cardinals’ Jordan Walker during the MLB baseball All-Star Home Run Derby, Monday, July 13, 2026, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
