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Baseball’s All-Star Game, begun at the 1933 World’s Fair, is in Texas this year

By Bob Madison - For the Chronicle | Jul 5, 2024

A famous quartet of players who participated in the 1933 All-Stars Game pose together for a photo: Jimmie Foxx, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Al Simmons. Courtesy photo

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Even in its infancy, baseball’s All-Star game was called the “Midsummer Classic” and had its beginning in 1933 with the appropriate names like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx and Al Simmons headlining the American League roster.

The National League could not match that star-studded name recognition nor the American League in the actual game and fell, 4-2.

The game was formulated as a one-time event. But it was so successful — drawing 49,200 to Comisky Park in Chicago — that it quickly became a yearly ritual to take place in each succeeding July.

By 1937, the American League fielded such “dignitaries” as Gehrig, Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, Joe Cronin, Hank Greenberg and Charlie Gehringer — all of whom were eventually enshrined in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

However, after Jackie Robinson broke the color line, the National League took almost complete control of “The Classic.”

By 1960 the National League brought out Hank Aaron, Ernie Banks, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente, Willie Mays, Vada Pinson and Bill White — a group of All-Stars the American League could not duplicate what with Minnie Minoso, Elston Howard, Vic Power and Al Smith.

Two All-Star games were played in 1960 and the National League won them both by scores of 5-3 and 6-0.

As the years went by, rosters were expanded and rules were changed. Nowadays, any pitcher starting a game on the Sunday before Tuesday’s All-Star game is replaced on the roster. That player still gets credit for making an All-Star team, but he does not participate and is replaced by another pitcher.

Each team has at least one representative on its league’s All-Star roster.

Theatrics and further fan entertainment has not so silently crept onto the All-Star Game stage.

A much-advertised Home Run Derby has been added to the carnival-like pre-game atmosphere. Coming on the Sunday before the Tuesday game, the Home Run Derby will try to present the game’s glitziest long ball names, but because of the chance of injury in the contest, some players (like Aaron Judge) will skip the made-for-television event.

This season’s All-Star game is to be played on July 16 at Globe Field in Arlington, Texas.

Before the advent of 30 Major League teams and so many other forms of entertainment, this game had Ruth and Gehrig and some mystique that filled any fan’s imagination and thirst for anything pertaining to baseball.

In 2024, the extended rosters number 34 players and the usually heated pennant races are not pushed to the inside pages of any newspaper.

It is still the “Midsummer Classic,” but its place in any summer’s sports schedule has to be shared . . . and not with a large array of future Hall of Famers.