WASHINGTON — Ask Matt Kemp for his recollections of the 2012 All-Star Game, and you won’t get much.
“We were in Kansas City,” he said. “I only did the Home Run Derby. I think I was coming back from a hamstring or something like that. I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”
It was so long ago that there was a 20-year-old kid on the American League team who was still probably unknown to many baseball fans when he played in his first All-Star Game.
A kid named Mike Trout.
“Most people knew he was pretty special back then,” said Justin Verlander, a member of that 2012 All-Star team. “Now you know, definitely, he’s a special talent. It’s fun seeing him here, to be able to display it in this venue.
“That’s what this game is for.”
The 2018 All-Star Game, which will be played on Tuesday at Nationals Park, will again mark an intersection for Trout and Kemp, the Angels and Dodgers stars who will start for their respective leagues.
The careers have taken disparate paths since that summer day when they were both All-Stars in Kansas City six years ago.
In 2012, Kemp was coming off a season in which he was the NL MVP runner-up, and he made his second straight All-Star Game. He was 26 years old — the same age Trout is now — and it must have seemed like he’d be able to mark the All-Star Game on his schedule for years.
“He was a superstar, man,” said fellow All-Star Kenley Jansen, his Dodgers teammate then and now.
About six weeks later, though, Kemp crashed into the wall at Colorado’s Coors Field, sustaining injuries that derailedl his career. His numbers declined and, over the next few years, he was traded to the San Diego Padres and then the Atlanta Braves.
By the time he got traded back to the Dodgers, he was just a dollar sign, a line item on the club’s ledger in order to help them stay under the luxury tax.
Yet, here he is.
After losing 40 pounds in the offseason, Kemp defied the experts simply by making the Dodgers opening day roster, and the story has gotten even better as he played well enough to be elected an All-Star starter.
“That’s one of the better stories in baseball,” said Arizona Diamondbacks All-Star pitcher Patrick Corbin. “To see him being one of the best players in the game, after being up and down. He’s a hard out. It’s cool to see him come back to be the hitter he’s always been.”
Even one of his bitter rivals, San Francisco Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford, concedes that it’s good to see. Crawford’s first two seasons in the majors were Kemp’s previous two All-Star years.
“I’d say he’s pretty similar,” Crawford said. “He’s hitting the ball like he did early in my career. … You always root for guys to do well, especially when it seems like teams kind of cast him off, and he comes back and has a year like this. It’s definitely fun to watch, even though he’s with the Dodgers.”
It’s fun for Trout too, whose connection to Kemp is through Torii Hunter. The former Angels star is still close to Trout, and he helped Kemp get in shape over the winter.
The three of them had dinner in spring training.
“He’s a great guy,” Trout said of Kemp. “I hear great things about him with Torii. I root for guys like that.”
Getting back to the All-Star Game six years later is a validation for Kemp of the work he did in the offseason.
To Trout, it’s just a standard part of his year.
Trout also has limited memories of that game in Kansas City, but because it all went by so fast.
“You are doing this and that and before you know, the two days are over,” he said.
Trout said he learned during each successive trip to the All-Star Game how to “relax and try to take every second in.” Now, he finds himself as something of a host to the players are new to the experience.
“The more you come, the more you have an idea of what’s going to happen, how things go,” he said. “You feel a little more comfortable. If (new guys) have questions, I’ll definitely answer them. I’m here if they need anything.”
This is Trout’s seventh All-Star selection, although he’s only been to the game six times. He missed last year’s game in Miami because he was rehabbing after having surgery on his thumb. Trout was just days away from returning to the Angels lineup, so he didn’t want to interrupt his rehab with a trip across the country.
“It was tough,” he said. “You want to be here for the guys, for the fans who vote you in. I was doing everything I can to get here. It didn’t work.”
Watching the All-Star Game on television in 2017 certainly reinforced in Trout’s mind something that Kemp knew: a trip to the All-Star Game is nothing to take for granted.
As Kemp sat at his table during the media session, in a room filled with the greatest baseball players in the world, he searched for details from 2012 and then concluded: “It’s good to be back.”
