PHILADELPHIA — Here at The Athletic, we like to call this entertaining little opus the “Weird and Wild” column. But as the 2026 All-Star Game chugged into the late innings Tuesday night, I have to admit I sent my editor, Pete, an update on how it was going.ME: “I’ve seen nothing either weird or wild about this game!”EDITOR PETE: “Work your magic!”So did I find the magic in the American League’s 4-0 wipeout of the star-studded National League lineup in the 96th All-Star Game? Of course! Turns out it was sitting there, right in front of our eyeballs. They call it …P-I-T-C-H-I-N-G.Yes, what happened at Citizens Bank Park on a steamy Tuesday night in July might not have been quite as wild (or weird) as the Home Run Derby that preceded it the night before. But if you’re fixated on that, you’re missing something important. What also happened in this game was this:Merely the most historically dominating pitching exhibition in the history of All-Star Games.So how weird, wild and historically dominating was it?In a moment, we’ll tell you all about that. But first, I had a question I needed to ask of the pitchers, after the AL had unleashed the first 15-strikeout, three-hit shutout in the All-Star Game record books:“Does a game like this almost make you feel sorry for the hitters?”Those pitchers I asked found that question quite entertaining, actually. Here’s how some of them answered it.RAYS RIGHT-HANDER DREW RASMUSSEN: “Gosh, no. Too many of those guys have hit homers off me. It’s hard to feel sorry for them.”TWINS RIGHT-HANDER JOE RYAN: “No, I never feel sorry for the hitters.”GUARDIANS CLOSER CADE SMITH: “You know, I’ve never been able to understand how hitters actually hit a baseball. It’s well beyond me, and that’s also part of the reason why I’m the one who throws it — because I’m not very good at hitting it, and I can’t understand how they do.”BLUE JAYS CLOSER LOUIS VARLAND: “No, never. I mean, well, I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe. It is the All-Star Game.”IMPORTANT FOLLOW-UP FROM THE ATHLETIC: “So it’s the best hitters in the world, right?EVEN MORE IMPORTANT FOLLOW-UP FROM VARLAND: “Also the best pitchers.”THE ATHLETIC: “Good point.”Pitching dominates MLB's All-Star GameJohnny Flores Jr. and Jayne OrensteinExcept we can hear you yelling out there. And what are you yelling? That many of the best pitchers in the world didn’t even pitch in this game. You’re not wrong.Cam Schlittler, Jacob Misiorowski, Shohei Ohtani, Zack Wheeler, Chris Sale, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal and Chase Burns were among the stars who either weren’t “available” to pitch in this game, weren’t on the team at all or couldn’t quite work this All-Star Game into their busy schedules. So don’t go looking for their names in this box score. None of that domination was their doing.“They needed to get me into that game,” quipped Giants ace Logan Webb, who (alas) also was deemed not available. “I would have helped get some more balls in play. I promise you that.”So even on a night when a bunch of the sport’s biggest pitching stars never threw a pitch, the men who did pitch reminded us yet again that it’s never been harder to hit in this sport. And that’s just a fact.“It’s pretty incredible when you watch the pitchers around baseball,” Webb said. “We saw it today. You can see where our game’s at. It’s pretty special the arms that we have.”This isn’t the time or the place, though, to take a deep dive into what has made today’s pitchers the hardest-throwing, most tech-savvy and most sneakily unpredictable pitchers in the annals of this sport. This, after all, is the Weird and Wild column. So here is where we ask …How Weird and Wild was it?Juan Soto had the NL’s lone hit — a single — over the first seven innings of Tuesday’s whiff-filled affair. (Al Bello / Getty Images)All-Star pitching history was made in this game by the American League — and made in so many ways, it may have been hard to appreciate at the time, especially if you were someone who’d just laid out $450 a ticket to watch zero National League base runners even make it beyond first base. So let’s start there.The NL was the first team in All-Star history to forget to advance a single runner past first — That seems not that good, but in a related development, the NL didn’t have many runners in the first place.The NL got one hit — a Juan Soto single — over the first seven innings of this game. That was fun. It wound up with three singles, two walks and all five of those runners stuck on first, never to budge. Just so you know, there had been nine previous shutouts in All-Star history. Every one of those teams at least got a runner to second. But that was definitely not a thing in this game.The AL staff rolled up five times as many strikeouts (15) as hits allowed (three) — You might see a box score like that once a week when, say, the Brewers play the Padres. But in an All-Star Game? Unheard of. This was the first 15-strikeout, three-hit game in All-Star history. And that should surprise nobody.The previous strikeout high for an All-Star staff that allowed no more than three hits? That was 11, by the NL, in a 1-0 shutout in 1968. The weird subplot there: Don Drysdale started that game, pitched three innings and contributed none of the strikeouts.That NL starting lineup sure seemed loaded … until the game started — Then those American League pitchers took over and held the NL’s high-powered lineup to an attractive 1-for-16 evening, with nine strikeouts. Does that seem unusually futile? We suggest you answer “yes” to that question.On one hand, this was not the fewest hits by a starting lineup in an All-Star Game. According to our friends from STATS Perform, the 1980 NL All-Stars got no hits (0-for-13) off Steve Stone and Tommy John. But this was the first time any starting lineup had struck out in more than half its plate appearances (nine of 17) in an All-Star Game. The old record was held by the 2019 NL batsmiths, who K’d in exactly half of their 18 plate appearances.Ten AL pitchers notched at least one strikeout — in the same game — This was maybe the weirdest and wildest note of them all. The AL pointed 11 pitchers toward the mound in this game, and 10 of them struck out somebody. The only exception was Rays reliever Bryan Baker, who got the final out.So how nuts was that? This was only the second game played in the history of this sport — All-Star, regular-season or postseason — in which any team got a strikeout from 10 different pitchers in a nine-inning game. The other was the 2014 All-Star Game.Everybody doesn’t hit: There were plenty of punchouts — 27 combined — including one by the Rays’ Drew Rasmussen, right. (Al Bello / Getty Images)Did both teams eat Special K for breakfast? Finally, let’s tip our cap to those NL pitchers because they also punched out 12 hitters. So what does that mean? These two staffs combined to pile up 27 strikeouts in an All-Star Game. And how many times had that happened in a nine-inning version of this game? Zero, as always, is a fantastic guess.So what sums up this All-Star Game better than this nugget:54 outs … 27 strikeouts!It was the first All-Star Game played in which half the outs were strikeouts. And that’s quite a wild factoid to contemplate.“I think that’s illegal,” the Phillies’ Brandon Marsh said with a laugh — but we regret to inform him that none of those strikeouts will be overturned by any court in this land.Five more Weird and Wild classicsMiguel Vargas’ eighth-inning homer was the lone extra-base hit in a game with actual fireworks but very little in the way of offensive fireworks. (Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)EXTRA CREDIT? NOT IN THIS GAME — It’s a good thing Miguel Vargas showed up. If he hadn’t, these teams would have combined for zero extra-base hits.Vargas pounded a monster second-deck home run in the eighth inning that turned into this game’s only extra-base hit — by either team. So at least that’s one record for offensive futility that didn’t get set.The 1958 game in Baltimore featured no extra-base hits. That is even more mind-boggling, considering Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and Ted Williams all played in that one. This was the fourth All-Star Game with only one extra-base hit. The others: 1953, 1963 and 1990.PARTY OF FIVE — There was a Dodger who pitched in this game. He wasn’t named Ohtani or Yamamoto. But Justin Wrobleski wound up doing something no Dodger had ever done:He pitched two innings of relief in this game — and struck out five hitters.According to Baseball Reference/Stathead, only three other pitchers have ever K’d that many hitters in an outing that short in an All-Star Game. It’s such a cool list.Pedro Martinez — in his epic 1999 start at Fenway