Mid-summer. Classic.

And so, because it was that kind of night, and that time of year, the Blob turned back the clock last night.

Grabbed the radio. Went out on the deck. Tuned in the MLB All-Star Game as a gentle evening breeze sighed in the treetops and this marvelous dome of sky, scrubbed clean of even the scrap of a cloud, went from blue to deeper blue to the royal purple of twilight.

A star winked on, here or there. The game, turned low, muttered softly, the porch-swing cadence of baseball on the radio taking you back to other summer nights in other places, to things that used to be but either no longer are or no longer are so readily accessed.

It's easy to bash baseball these days, and the Blob has done more than its share. The 2018 version of the game is not particularly appealing, at least on the major-league level. There are too many strikeouts, because there are too many good arms and too few players willing to wait them out. Plate discipline has gone the way of the dodo bird. Everyone wants to hit bombs now, and they swing accordingly.

The All-Star Game last night was a reflection of that, as only it could be. A record 10 baseballs went flying out of Nationals Park in D.C., the last two from Alex Bregman and George Springer of the Astros, who provided the American League an 8-6 win in extra innings. It was the AL's sixth straight win in the Mid-Summer Classic.

And yet ... and yet ...

And yet, some things remain timeless, in our most timeless game.  Three strikes and you're out. Four balls and take your base. The sheer democracy of being able to argue your case with the blues. The sheer authoritarianism of the blues always having the last word in that court of appeal.

The perfectly struck ball, arrowing surely into an empty swatch of green, and the way the kid who struck it lights up like Christmas morning at the sight of it.

And so there came a time last night when Jose Altuve of the Astros caught a pitch and drove it into an unattended space, and wound up on first base. I was inside watching on TV by that time, having gotten my nostalgia fix for another summer. The camera zoomed in on Altuve, safely aboard on first. His arms were in the air. And the smile on his face ...

Well. Altuve is a professional, same as they all were in this game last night. They get paid great sums of money to do what they do. Every day, in small ways and big, we are reminded that baseball on their level is a business, and purely so.

But the All-Star Game is our reminder, every year, that it is also still a kid's game. Players swing and miss and grab their heads in mock dismay, grinning all the time. Umpires and opponents fraternize shamelessly with one another. And there on first stood Altuve all lit up like Christmas morning, grinning a kid's grin because he'd just singled in the All-Star Game, and he gets paid absurdly well to do that sort of thing. And life was as good as it could be because of that.

I can't believe they pay me to play baseball: That's the old cliché, right?

Take another look at Jose Altuve. On this night at least, it was no cliché.

It was home truth.