Major League Baseball All-Star Game


The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball and contested between the all-stars from the American League and National League. Starting fielders are selected by fans, pitchers are selected by managers, and reserves are selected by players and managers.
The game is usually played on the second or third Tuesday in July, and is meant to mark the symbolic halfway point of the MLB season. Both leagues share an All-Star break, with no regular-season games scheduled from the day before through two days after the All-Star Game, with the exception of a single Thursday night game starting in the 2018 season. Some additional events and festivities associated with the game take place each year close to and during this break in the regular season.
No official MLB All-Star Games were held in 1945 and 2020, and no official selection of players took place, due to World War II travel restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Two All-Star Games were held each season from 1959 to 1962. The most recent All-Star Game was held on July 15, 2025, at Truist Park in Cumberland, home of the NL's Atlanta Braves.

History

Baseball teams put on benefit games for the families of players who died unexpectedly. For example, the Addie Joss Benefit Game in raised $12,914 for the Joss family.
The first All-Star Game was held on July 6,, at Comiskey Park in Chicago as part of the 1933 World's Fair, and was initiated by Arch Ward, then sports editor for the Chicago Tribune, and supported by American League president Will Harridge, who lobbied baseball executives to create the event. Initially intended to be a one-time event, its success resulted in making the contest an annual one.
From to, two All-Star Games were held each season, in order to increase the money going to the players' pension fund. This practice ended after the owners agreed to give the players a larger share of the income from a single game.
According to the Baseball Database provided by Sean Lahman, a total of 2,040 individual players have been selected for an All-Star game between 1933 and 2025.

Venues

MLB chooses the venue for the All-Star Game. The criteria for venue selection are subjective; generally, cities with new ballparks and those who have not hosted the Game in many years – or evertend to get selected. Over time, this has resulted in certain cities being selected to host more often than others. Cleveland Stadium and the original Yankee Stadium have each hosted four All-Star Games, the most of any venue, and New York City has hosted more Games than any other city, having done so nine times in five different stadiums. At the same time, the New York Mets did not host for 48 seasons, while the Los Angeles Dodgers did not host for 42 years,. The Tampa Bay Rays are currently the only club yet to host an All-Star Game, and two other teams have never hosted the All-Star Game at their current stadium: The New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium and the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park. Three teams have won the World Series in the same year their stadium hosted the All-Star Game: the 1939 New York Yankees, the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 1977 New York Yankees.
The venues traditionally alternated between the American and National Leagues every year, with an AL team hosting in an odd-numbered year and an NL club hosting in an even-numbered year. This tradition has been broken several times; the first time was in 1951, when the AL's Detroit Tigers hosted the game as part of the city's 250th birthday. The second was when the two-game format from 1959 to 1962 resulted in the AL being one game ahead in turn. The NL hosted two consecutive games in 2006 and 2007, and in 2021 and 2022. The NL also hosted four straight games from 2015 to 2018. The AL hosted two consecutive games in 2023 and 2024.
During the first two decades of the Game's history, there were two pairs of teams that shared ballparks. In Philadelphia, the AL's Athletics and NL's Phillies both played at Shibe Park, and in St. Louis, the AL's Browns and NL's Cardinals shared Sportsman's Park. This led to some shorter-than-usual gaps between All-Star Games played at the same venue; Sportsman's Park hosted the All-Star Game twice in eight years, while Shibe Park was the All-Star venue twice in nine years.
The "home team" has traditionally been the league in which the host franchise plays its games. The lone exception has been the 2016 Game in which the AL was the "home" team, despite its being played in Petco Park, home of the NL's San Diego Padres. This was announced after the 2017 All-Star Game was awarded to Miami, marking a third straight game hosted at an NL venue. This was done because, from 2003 to 2016, the league who won the All-Star Game was given home field advantage in the World Series, and MLB did not want to allow the NL to have the last at-bat in an All-Star Game for three straight years. MLB ended this practice in 2017, and the All-Star Game reverted to having the host team's league serve as the home team.

All-star team rosters

Selection of managers and coaches

Since 1934, the managers of the game are the managers of the previous year's league pennant winners and World Series clubs.
The coaching staff for each team is selected by its manager. This honor is given to the manager, not the team, so it is possible that the All-Star manager could no longer be with the team with which he won. This happened in 2003, when Dusty Baker managed the National League team despite having moved from the National League champion San Francisco Giants to the Chicago Cubs. This has also included situations where the person is no longer actively managing a team. For the first All-Star Game, intended as a one-time event, Connie Mack and John McGraw were regarded as baseball's venerable managers, and were asked to lead the American and National League teams, respectively. McGraw came out of retirement for that purpose. Dick Williams resigned after managing the Oakland Athletics to the 1973 World Series. In 1974, he became manager of the California Angels, whose uniform he wore for the game. Tony La Russa, who managed the World Series champion St. Louis Cardinals in 2011, and retired after the season, came back to manage the National League in 2012.
In 1979, Bob Lemon managed the American League team after having been fired by New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Lemon led the Yankees to the 1981 World Series but did not make it to the '82 All-Star Game as manager after again being fired by Steinbrenner, so Billy Martin, skipper of the 1981 AL runner-up Oakland Athletics, led the All-Star squad.
There have been some exceptional cases where the usual rule was abandoned. After the 1964 season and the World Series, the managers, Johnny Keane of the St. Louis Cardinals and Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees, both left their teams and found new jobs in the other league: Keane was hired to manage the Yankees, and Berra became a player-coach with the New York Mets. The Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds had finished in a second-place tie in the NL; the Chicago White Sox had finished second in the AL. Cincinnati's manager, Fred Hutchinson, had died in the off-season, so Gene Mauch of the Phillies and Al López of the White Sox were chosen to be the managers for the 1965 All-Star Game. The rule may have been abandoned again in 2020, as the manager of the 2019 American League champion Houston Astros, A. J. Hinch, was suspended for the 2020 season for his role in the Astros' scandal involving the usage of video to steal signs; however the game was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Because of the season-ending 1994–95 MLBPA strike where the season was abandoned without official league champions, the 1995 game featured the "unofficial" league champions, the managers of the clubs leading their respective leagues' won-loss records, Buck Showalter of the New York Yankees and Felipe Alou of the Montreal Expos for the All-Star Game.

Selection of players

The All-Star Game roster size for each league was 18 in 1933, 20 from 1934 to 1938, 25 from 1939 to 1981, 30 from 1982 to 2002, 32 from 2003 to 2008, 33 in 2009, and since 2010, there have been 34 players on each league's team roster.
One continuing controversy of the player selection process is the rule that each team has to have at least one representative on its league's All-Star roster.
On April 29, 2010, MLB announced several rules changes for future All-Star games, effective with the 2010 edition.
  • Rosters were expanded by one extra position player, to a total of 34.
  • The designated hitter will be used in all games, even in National League ballparks.
  • Pitchers who start on the Sunday before the game break will be replaced on the roster, but will still be recognized as All-Stars.
  • Each manager may designate a position player who will be eligible for game re-entry if the last position player is injured or ejected. This is in addition to a rule that allows a player to re-enter to replace an injured or ejected catcher.
The AL and NL All-Stars are selected through the following process:
  • Fan voting : Baseball fans vote on the starting position players for the All-Star Game, with ballots formerly distributed at Major League Baseball games before mid-season and, as of 2015, exclusively on the Internet. Since 2022, fans can vote for the designated hitter on both leagues; prior to that, only the AL designated hitter can be voted in, while the NL designated hitter must be selected by the manager. Fan voting has been recently criticized because most of the starting players can come from teams that have large fan bases or passionate fan bases such as the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago Cubs.
  • Player voting : Eight pitchers and one back-up player for each position are elected by the players, coaches, and managers. If the top vote-getter at a position has also been selected via fan voting, the second-place finisher in this category is selected.
  • Manager selection : The manager of each league's All-Star team in consultation with the other managers in his league and the Commissioner's Office will fill his team's roster up to 33 players. Prior to 2022, the NL manager had the power to select his team's designated hitter; this is no longer applicable after the NL adopted the designated hitter and fans are allowed to vote for that league's starting DH. At this point, it is ensured that every team is represented by at least one player.
  • Final vote : After the list of 33 players for each league is announced, fans vote for one additional player, chosen from a list of five players that is compiled by the manager of each league's team and the Commissioner's Office. This concluded in 2018.
  • Replacements: After the roster is selected, the All-Star manager and the Commissioner's Office will replace players who are injured, decline to participate, and pitchers who started on the Sunday before the game.