This Tuesday night, July 14, the 96th MLB All-Star Game gets played at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. It's the fifth time the City of Brotherly Love has hosted, and the first since 1996. If you coach kids, this week is a gift: the Home Run Derby is Monday night, the Futures Game full of soon-to-be big leaguers is Sunday, and the game itself is Tuesday. Three straight nights of "hey, watch this" moments to point at.
It was only supposed to happen once
The All-Star Game exists because of a newspaperman. In 1933, Chicago was hosting a World's Fair, and Arch Ward, the sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, talked baseball into staging a one-time "Game of the Century": the best of the American League against the best of the National League, at Comiskey Park, with the fans helping pick the players.
On July 6, 1933, a 38-year-old Babe Ruth stepped up in the third inning and hit the very first All-Star home run. Of course he did. The AL won 4-2, everyone loved it, and the one-time exhibition has been played nearly every summer since. Only a world war (1945) and a pandemic (2020) have stopped it.
Moments Little Leaguers should know
A year later, in 1934, Giants screwballer Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin, back to back to back to back to back. All five ended up in the Hall of Fame. It's still maybe the best pitching sequence ever thrown.
In 1941, Ted Williams won it with a three-run homer in the bottom of the ninth and skipped around the bases like, well, a Little Leaguer. Fifty-eight years later at Fenway in 1999, every All-Star on the field crowded around an 80-year-old Williams like kids around a legend, because that's what they were.
In 2001, 40-year-old Cal Ripken Jr. homered in his 19th and final All-Star Game and took MVP. In 2002, Torii Hunter reached over the center-field wall and stole a home run from Barry Bonds, who responded by picking Hunter up and slinging him over his shoulder. The whole thing is an exhibition, and the players know it: it's the one night the best in the world get to play like it's for fun. Which is the same thing you tell your team, isn't it?
Why fans pick the starters
From the very first game, the All-Star Game has belonged to the fans, who vote the starting lineups in. That tradition survived even the great Cincinnati ballot-stuffing scandal of 1957, when Reds fans voted so hard that seven of the eight NL starting spots went to Cincinnati players. The commissioner swapped two of them out, took the vote away from fans for a decade, and gave it back in 1970. Democracy in baseball, like everywhere, has its moments.
This year's edition
Last July, the game ended in the first-ever swing-off: a home run derby tiebreaker after nine innings, with the National League winning it on Kyle Schwarber's swings. That earned Schwarber the MVP, and this year he comes home to Philadelphia leading the majors in home runs. Bryce Harper, who won the 2018 Derby with his dad pitching to him, is in Monday's Home Run Derby at his home park, which goes back to the classic no-clock format this year. Tell your players that: the biggest stars in the world still want their dad throwing them batting practice.
And if your kids dream bigger than Tuesday, show them Sunday's Futures Game. Every name on that roster was a Little Leaguer a blink ago. So was every All-Star. Every single one of them started with a coach writing their name on a lineup card.
Next up: A Quick History of Little League and the Batting Order →