Nationals Pitcher -- Not That One -- Stars in NL Win

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- Yep, someday baseball fans in D.C. will revisit the lively summer of 2010 and talk about that hard-throwing right-hander who came up big for the Nationals on a large stage.

Stephen Strasburg?

Nah, Matt Capps.

Capps, the team's closer, added a shiny nugget to his career Tuesday night by picking up the National League's first victory in an All-Star Game since 1996.

"We snapped the streak that everybody's been talking about, and to have my name attached to it is a pretty satisfying feeling," he said.

Capps usually enters in the ninth inning, but he was needed in the sixth after Phillies manager Charlie Manuel pulled Roy Halladay with two outs and a runner on first. The batter was Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, who on Monday won the Home Run Derby.

A first-time All-Star, Capps brought a bit too much adrenaline to the mound at Angel Stadium.

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"I threw the first two a mile outside," he said.

The right-hander came back to strike out Ortiz, though, which kept the NL's deficit at 1-0. When the NL scored three runs in the seventh on Brian McCann's double, Capps was on his way to the record books.

He was still smiling 90 minutes after the game as he held onto his All-Star name placard that he'd plucked from above his dressing stall.

"The cleats I wore, I'll probably hang next to the jersey and get everybody to sign it," he said. "I had a blast. I tried to soak up as much as I could, but I had an absolute blast. To get into the ballgame and have an impact on the outcome of it was pretty huge."

Despite not joining the Nationals until June, Strasburg has made the Nationals relevant this season. So much so that some fans and media pundits clamored for Manuel to put Strasburg on the All-Star roster.

Share Capps didn't weigh in on that subject Tuesday, but he said that Strasburg appears to be "effortless" in throwing fastballs clocked up to 100 mph. "He throws it a lot easier than I do," he said.

Hard to imagine how Strasburg would've improved the NL's results.

The only run the AL scored was unearned, and the NL pitchers showed ample arm strength.

"Our pitchers, there was a lot of power stuff out there, power sinkers from Halladay and Ubaldo [Jimenez]," said Capps, a 26-year-old who has 22 saves and a 3.19 ERA this year. "When you've got closers like Heath Bell and Brian Wilson in the bullpen, and guys like Evan Meek (and Tim Lincecum) who didn't even get into the game, we were pretty loaded."