Illinois bicentennial: The man who invented baseball's All-Star Game
At the beginning of the Great Depression, baseball seemed invulnerable to the country's economic hardships. After a successful 1930 season, the editors of Baseball Magazine smugly declared that organized baseball was "an impregnable industry ... vitally necessary to the public welfare." But in 1931, baseball owners, faced with sharply declining attendance, began a series of cost-saving moves, including major salary cuts and and roster reductions.
In 1932, after a 45 percent drop in attendance, owners, despite dramatic cuts, lost more than $1 million. Only the pennant-winning Cubs and Yankees made a profit, though the Cubs' major-league leading attendance figure of slightly less than a million was down 500,000 from 1930. The lowly St. Louis Browns drew only 82,000 fans for the entire season, an average of barely 1,000 fans per game.
In 1933, Arch Ward, sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, proposed a mid-season exhibition game to coincide with Chicago's World's Fair. His idea was to invite baseball fans to vote for all-star teams from each league. He argued that baseball needed an event to show the country that the national pastime was not in a state of decline. He also proposed that the money from the game be used to provide pensions for destitute former players.
Once baseball agreed to Ward's proposal, the Chicago Tribune invited 55 other newspapers to participate in the balloting. The game itself was scheduled for Thursday, July 6 at Comiskey Park. When the gates opened, 47,000 fans poured into the ballpark to see baseball's greatest stars, and they weren't disappointed. They watched Babe Ruth hit a two-run homer in the third inning as the American League, managed by Connie Mack, defeated the National League 4-2, despite the strong pitching of Cub Lon Warneke and a home run by Cardinal Frankie Frisch.
The 1933 All-Star game was called "The Game of the Century" because it was scheduled as a one-time event, but it was so successful in raising money for player pensions and celebrating baseball's greatness that the Chicago Tribune, in an editorial, wrote that "nearly every city in the major leagues wants to promote a similar contest next year." Baseball's response was to schedule another All-Star game in 1934, this time to be played at the Polo Grounds, home field for the New York Giants.
The 1934 All-Star game, attended by more than 48,000 fans, provided baseball with one of its most memorable moments and assured the continuation of the game as an annual event. The American League defeated the National League 9-7 despite home runs by Cardinals Frankie Frisch and Ducky Medwick, but it was the top of the first inning that gave the All-Star game its most dramatic moment.
After the first two batters reached base, the Giants' Carl Hubbell struck out Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Jimmy Foxx to end the inning. In the top of the second, Hubbell ran his streak to five batters by striking out Al Simmons and Joe Cronin before Bill Dickey singled. Every batter struck out by Hubbell was a future Hall-of-Famer, as was Hubbell himself.
Over the years, baseball's mid-summer classic, despite criticism that the game has become boring, has been a showcase for dramatic events by baseball's greatest stars, including dramatic game-winning home runs by the Cardinals' Stan Musial and Red Schoendienst and the Red Sox' Ted Williams. It's also created a national stage for great players, like the Cubs' Ernie Banks and the White Sox' Luke Appling, who never had the opportunity to play in the World Series.
The All-Star game, like baseball itself, has become a victim of television overexposure and endless computer analysis, but during the Illinois bicentennial, it's a good time to remember that, thanks to the Chicago Tribune's Arch Ward, the game once elevated the spirit of the nation during one of its darkest times.
• Reading Baseball is a series of stories and commentaries by Richard "Pete" Peterson, co-author with his son Stephen of "The Slide: Leyland, Bonds and the Star-Crossed Pittsburgh Pirates" and the editor of The St. Louis Baseball Reader.