The American League has, for many years, been in a good way. The last time it lost an All-Star Game, Barack Obama had not yet won elected office and Arizona Diamondbacks right fielder Justin Upton was eight years old. Last night, before 55,632 boisterous fans at Yankee Stadium, all the National League’s misery was compressed into a few hours and compounded, infinitely. With home field advantage for the World Series at stake, the AL’s best came back from deficits of 2-0 and 3-2, and then absolutely refused either to score or allow a run for forever and a day, until, at 1:37 in the morning, Michael Young lofted a sacrifice fly to right off Brad Lidge and brought home the winning run. It was, easily, one of the greatest All-Star Games ever played.

Last night’s real stars were, by design, Yankee Stadium itself and the 49 Hall of Famers, including Yankees icons Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, and Goose Gossage, who took the field in a shiver-inducing pregame ceremony. The legends greeted the game’s starters on the field, presenting such startling images as Hank Aaron shaking Ichiro Suzuki’s hand in short right field, and Willie Mays standing with Josh Hamilton in center field. Moments later, a nuclear bomber flew overhead, its roar shaking the stadium as Sheryl Crow reached the high notes of the national anthem. Ailing Yankees owner George Steinbrenner then took the field in a golf cart. All of this was glorious.

The actual All-Star Game is traditionally unwatchable, so one could not have expected the following nine innings to upstage the festivities. Perhaps they didn’t; it takes a lot to surpass the sight of legends like Earl Weaver and Billy Williams on a ballfield. This game, though, pretty well did.

For the first four innings, the teams were locked in a scoreless duel. American League starter Cliff Lee, a left-hander of relatively modest physical gifts, struck out the first two batters he faced and induced weak ground outs from such fearsome hitters as Albert Pujols and Matt Holliday, setting a tone. National League starter Ben Sheets worked deeper counts, walking two and striking out three in his two innings, and surrendered only one hit, a Derek Jeter knock that could well have been scored an error were it not for the fact that this would have provoked the crowd into a violent, unbounded rage.

Each fresh pitcher seemed more aggressive and confident, an early highlight being Carlos Zambrano’s stint. After surrendering a single to Suzuki, he coaxed a 6-4-3 double play out of Jeter, and got Hamilton to pound the ball to second. The next inning he struck out Alex Rodriguez, worked another grounder out of Manny Ramirez, and then picked off Milton Bradley after he reached via a Chipper Jones error. This was a real star turn, as the Chicago Cubs ace crushed the hopes of the American League’s best in merciless, brutal fashion.

The American League countered with sharp pitching and strong defense. Suzuki turning a fairly routine Pujols double into an out at second base with a single whiplike motion was the sort of thing for which he’s rightly become famous, and first baseman Kevin Youkilis seemed to be playing hockey along the lines. All was well, and the game clipped along, a fine development since the All-Star Game, which is for children more than anyone else, started at the absurd hour of 8:47.

In the 5th inning, Holliday broke the knot for the NL with a long solo home run, and in the sixth, Hanley Ramirez led off with a single, moved to third on a Chase Utley single (this was the first time all night there had been more than one runner on), and scored on a Lance Berkman sacrifice fly. The way the game had gone to this point, the end seemed something near a formality. Some nights, a 2-0 lead counts for a lot. This certainly seemed one of them.

Predictably—nothing in baseball works out as you think it will—in the 7th, Boston’s J.D. Drew, jeered as nastily all night as every Red Sox and enjoying his first All-Star game at-bat, tied things up with a two-run home run off Edinson Volquez, who leads the NL in earned run average and has surrendered just five home runs in 117.2 innings. The Yankee faithful, who are after all American League partisans, erupted with a roar close in scale to that of the nuclear bomber, before letting Drew know that they still hated him.

In the very next half-inning, the Red Sox haters had their chance to gloat. Boston closer Jonathan Papelbon said Monday that he’d love a chance to close the game out and was predictably painted by the tabloids as having dealt out a grave and mortal insult to the universally revered Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera. (“PAPELBUM!” blared the Daily News) Equally predictably, he was, on his entrance, treated with all the tenderness that would treat the shade of Harry Frazee in Boston, with the crowd chanting “overrated” at him and demanding Rivera. Rather unpredictably, he was then victim of a series of unfortunate and frankly hilarious events—a single, a stolen base, a throwing error, and a sacrifice fly—that ended with Miguel Tejada sliding home to give his side the lead, making near every fan in the place momentarily a National League fan.

Granting that Papelbum had done nothing at all actually wrong, and that he even may have been unnerved by hoodlums menacing his wife during yesterday’s Sixth Avenue parade, this was still the equivalent of a moustache-twirling villain slipping and landing face first in a cream pie, a great moment in baseball. Making it still better was an Evan Longoria double the next half-inning that scored Grady Sizemore, made a minor goat of Mets relief ace Billy Wagner, and set the stage for the entrance of the great Rivera in the 8th inning.

Rivera was spectacular. He threw 26 pitches, 18 of them strikes. He got five outs, an extraordinary thing for a one-inning closer to do in an exhibition. He allowed nary a run; he was as graceful as he always is. He earned the win, deserved the win, and had the win in hand. In the bottom of the 10th, the score tied 3-3, Texas’s Michael Young made it to first on a Dan Uggla error. He then made it to third on a fresh Uggla error (one of an impressive three on the night) that left all hands safe with Chicago’s Carlos Quentin aboard. Detroit’s Carlos Guillen was walked. With none out and the bases loaded, Colorado pitcher Aaron Cook peered in toward the catcher. He was cooked, exposed—the game was lost.

He proceeded to induce three straight ground balls, which three of the very finest young hitters in the American League—Sizemore, Longoria, and Justin Morneau, the first two of whom are franchise players and the last of whom is a former Most Valuable Player—pounded into the dirt. One out at home; a second out at home; a straight shot to shortstop. So do games go on to the 11th inning. And for that matter, the 12th, when Guillen, hitting against Cook again, missed a leadoff home run by inches, settled for a double, made third on a Sizemore groundout, and… once again didn’t score, as Longoria and Morneau pounded the ball down the lines for ground outs.

(At this point, I asked the online Magic Eight Ball if anyone would ever again get a run in. “Maybe,” it replied.)

Some time as the clock ticked closer to 2:00—perhaps it was when Arizona’s Brandon Webb and Tampa Bay’s Scott Kazmir, each an ace in a heated pennant race, were dragooned into this game, despite each being on two days of rest—it became hard to avoid the idea that the only possible reason for commissioner Bud Selig not to call a tie was that he was degraded and humiliated six years ago when forced to call a tie after 11 innings in his home town of Milwaukee. This unpleasant incident is what begat the whole “This time it counts” business, which involved the World Series home field advantage and various rules meant to guarantee that All-Star teams would never again run out of pitchers. Then the American League loaded the bases, and managed actually to do something with the loading. If this ends up a send off for the stadium after all, as a look at the standings would suggest it might be, it wasn’t a bad one at all.

tmarchman@nysun.com