*Bleep* the National League

What's the secret to American League All-Star game dominance?

[T]he greatest pregame speech since Rockne invoked the Gipper, one laced with profanity and delivered to the American League All-Stars every year.

Huh? A profanity-laced anti-NL tirade? What old-schooler still has the gonads to bring that?

Ichiro Suzuki, the Seattle Mariners’ wisp of an outfielder, a man who still uses a translator to do interviews with English-speaking reporters – and happens to be baseball’s amalgam of Anthony Robbins and George Carlin. Every year, after the AL manager addresses his team, Ichiro bursts from his locker, a bundle of kinetic energy, and proceeds, in English, to disparage the National League with an H-bomb of F-bombs.

Sportswriters got the secret out last year in New York.

The exact words are not available. Players are too busy laughing to remember them. Ichiro wouldn’t dare repeat them in public. So here’s the best facsimile possible.

“Bleep … bleep bleep bleep … National League … bleep … bleep … bleeeeeeeeep … National – bleep bleep bleepbleepbleep!”

Ichiro was asked how much he believes the speech has contributed to the AL dominance that has stretched more than a decade now. "I've got to say over 90 percent," he said.

Apparently, he didn't get a chance to give the speech this year, but no difference: the AL still won (as they did for the four years preceding Ichiro's presence).

The NL's losing streak is as long as Ryan Franklin's beard, and just as mangy.