The Midsummer Classic

Today, Major League Baseball will hold its annual All-Star Game at the new Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri. The All-Star game comes smack-dab in the middle of the baseball season, and allows most players a nice three-day break. For the lucky and popular minority, it offers a chance to shine for a nationwide audience, as the American League battles the National League for bragging rights.
Fans are allowed to vote for the eight starting position players (this excludes pitchers); players and managers vote for the bench players and some pitchers; and the rest of the All-Star team members are picked by the two All-Star managers (who, incidentally, are usually the managers from the two World Series teams from the previous season). Nowadays fans can vote on the internet for their favorite players; they can even vote up to 25 times! In recent years there has been a special “Final Vote”, which allows fans to vote for one of about five players per league to fill the final All-Star roster spot.
Selection to an All-Star team is thus a popularity contest, and every year fans and sports media figures criticize and complain and argue about the fact that so-and-so didn’t make the team even though he was winning the batting title so far, or that the pitcher with the fastest fastball and the lowest earned-run average was left off for the second year in a row. In fact, the powers that be in Major League Baseball once stripped the loyal fans of their voting rights, in 1957. That’s when Cincinnati Reds fans voted early and very, very often for their hometown players and elected a Red to every position but one. But that was an anomaly, and democracy was soon restored to baseball. But it’s true – the fans may not make the most informed choices based on the cold, hard facts and statistics, but their word is law. Whoever they like is who will play – or at least start the game. Anyone who’s watched an All-Star Game knows that the players who begin the game rarely ever play until the end – after all, there are other stars on the bench waiting to get a chance to hit or pitch or field.
Ballot-stuffing and voting irregularities haven’t been the only All-Star Game controversy. I have mentioned that the starters of the game usually don’t finish it. In fact, they usually start pulling them out in favor of the backups by the third or fourth inning. This makes it so that as many All-Stars as possible can enter the action for at least an inning or two. It’s also dangerous, as proven by what happened in 2002. Neither the American nor the National Leagues managed to win the game by the time the ninth inning was over, and in the eleventh inning they made a horrifying discovery – there was no one left on the bench or in the bullpen. That meant that whoever was pitching and playing had to keep pitching and playing until the game was decided. However, the All-Star Game is only a glorified exhibition game, and it doesn’t count. What manager would want his pitcher to risk injury just because he had to pitch perhaps twelve extra innings in a big practice game because there were no pitchers left? No manager would. So the commissioner decided to call the game over in a tie. Needless to say, this was not a popular decision. The next season (and every season since), the powers that be tried to appease the disgruntled fans by declaring that the winning league in the All-Star Game would get home-field advantage once the World Series rolled around in October – thus attempting to make the All-Star Game more interesting by making it somewhat more meaningful.
The very first All-Star Game was held in 1933 in Chicago. It was only meant to be a one-time event as part of the World’s Fair, but it caught on so well that it became an annual event. And they’ve only skipped it twice – once in 1945 due to the ongoing war, and once in 1994 due to the fact that nobody was playing because they were on strike. From 1959 to 1962, they had the bright idea of playing not one but two All-Star Games a year. That’s why this year’s game is the 80th All-Star Game, not the 77th, as pure math might dictate.
The All-Star Game is always held on a Tuesday in July, and since 1985 the day before has been the day for the Home Run Derby. This is the event where a handful of the sport’s strongest sluggers compete in an attempt to hit as many balls out of the park as possible. There are also other side events like a game for rookies and minor leaguers and a game for old-timers. The game is never held in the same stadium twice in a row, and alternates between American League and National League ballparks. Cleveland and New York, with four All-Star Games each, hold the current record for most games hosted.
The American League is currently enjoying a stretch of dominance that has lasted over a decade. Excluding the tie game in 2002, the AL has won eleven straight All-Star Games. And that’s the way it’s usually been, with one league or the other dominating for a decade or more. However, it might be interesting to note that the National League leads 40-37 in decided games – and the American League leads in overall runs by just two!
Even though the All-Star Game is just a big exhibition game, and even though some fans think it’s boring, it’s had its exciting and historic moments. In 1934, pitcher Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants used his famous screwball to strike out, all in a row, five of the greatest hitters in the history of the game – Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees; Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons (who were at one time teammates of my great-grandfather) of the Philadelphia Athletics; and Joe Cronin of the Washington Senators. In 1999, Hall of Famer Ted Williams, the last hitter to have a .400 batting average in a full season, was welcomed back to Fenway Park in Boston (where he used to play in the 1940s and 1950s) in an emotional pre-game ceremony. In 2007, the Mariners’ Ichiro Suzuki hit the only inside-the-park home run in All-Star Game history. And last year was the longest All-Star Game – almost five hours long!
Who knows whether tonight’s game will hold anything historic or memorable. The President of the United States is scheduled to throw out the ceremonial first pitch – that doesn’t happen every year. But as any baseball fan knows, once the real first pitch is thrown and the game itself is under way, anything can happen.