The period July 5-11 in history is dominated by All-Star Game highlights.
The First All-Star Game
Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Chuck Klein, Jimmie Foxx at the 1933 All Star game. A group of absolute legends at the first All-Star game. pic.twitter.com/IrDXdzhL3Z
— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) January 7, 2025
July 6, 1933: The first Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the brainchild of Arch Ward of the Chicago Tribune. It was held at Comiskey Park as part of the 1933 World’s Fair and was never intended to be a permanent annual event. John McGraw of the New York Giants, managing the National League, engaged in a bit of “gamesmanship” by refusing to submit his lineup until the start of the game. Fittingly, the hero was the New York Yankees’ Babe Ruth, who smacked a two-run homer off Bill Hallahan of the St. Louis Cardinals in the third inning. A low curve ball, reported the Associated Press. Ruth’s clout was the difference as the American League won, 4-2. The AL dazzled the NL with “Leftys.” The Yankees’ Lefty Gomez was the starter and winner, and the Philadelphia Athletics’ Lefty Grove earned the save, which wasn’t yet an official statistic.
No Sell-Outs
July 8, 1936: NL president Ford C. Frick was upset about the previous day’s All-Star Game, despite the NL winning it, 4-3. The attendance at Braves Field was 25,556, approximately 18,000 short of a sellout. “We’ll never yell sellout again,” an NL spokesman told the AP. “It is no wonder the Boston crowd was a flop. For weeks, the newspapers and radio have been shouting sellout and predicting that not even a bleacher ticket would be available at the park on the day of the game. And what was the result? Just 18,000 fans, many of whom would have paid any price to get anywhere in the park, were frightened away.” The vacant seats were a major story, all right, but personally, I think the bigger story was that newspapers could shout.
NL Gets Knocked Dizzy
July 7, 1937: This was the All-Star Game best known for the toe injury that ruined Dizzy Dean’s career. With two out in the bottom of the third inning, Cleveland’s Earl Averill lined a pitch off the Cardinals’ great’s big toe. (Legend has it that the injury caused Dean to alter his delivery, resulting in arm trouble.) The ball deflected to the second baseman, who tossed Averill out to retire the side. Dean didn’t return in the fourth inning, but that didn’t strike observers as odd; in those days, the All-Star starting pitchers usually went just three innings. Neither wire service account mentioned the injury, nor did Dean. The talk was all about what happened immediately before Averill’s at-bat.
Pitching to Joe DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig, Dean twice shook off his catcher, Gabby Hartnett, who wanted curveballs. Dean delivered fastballs, DiMaggio delivered a single, and Gehrig delivered a home run deep into the stands at Griffith Stadium. Afterward, in the NL clubhouse, according to the AP, Dean lamented, “Those were the blows that killed the golden goose, but those guys were lucky stiffs. They got all the breaks. We got nothing. But Gabby was right. When he asked for a curve against DiMaggio, I shook him off and Joe singled. I was sure I was right on Gehrig. In the first inning, I fanned him with a fast one, but he pickled the fastest one I’ve got in the third.”
In the fourth, the AL knocked out the Giants’ Carl Hubbell with three more runs and went on to an easy 8-3 victory. But Dean was also a hot topic in the AL clubhouse for his pregame boasts. Cried AL coach Art Fletcher, “The great Dean, the almighty Dean! He knew how to pitch to those American Leaguers! He’d stop ‘em! ‘Why with me pitching, the National League oughter be one to ten favorites!’”
Ted Hits the “Eephus”
July 9, 1946: At Fenway Park, the AL thoroughly dominated the NL and cruised to an easy 12-0 victory. Hometown hero Ted Williams was the hero in this one, going 4-for-4 with two home runs, five RBI, and four runs scored. He took the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Kirby Higbe deep to lead off the fourth inning. It was Williams’ second home run, a three-run shot in the eighth inning off Rip Sewell’s famous “eephus” pitch, that the game is best remembered for.
After the game, Williams laughed as he spoke to United Press while under a hot shower. As Pitcher List is a family website, I won’t speculate on what the UP was doing in the shower with Williams. “Doggone, I didn’t think I could do it,” said Williams. “I’ll bet he’ll never throw that baby at me again.” Meanwhile, Sewell, a Pittsburgh Pirates hurler, was in the NL clubhouse laughing at himself. “That guy’s the first one who ever hit my ‘blooper’ out of the park. Once a fellow clouted it for a triple, but this Williams really stepped up and put it away. But I figured I had nothing to lose. Williams was hitting everything else that came within reach, so I figured I’d give him a shot at that one.”
Clemente Overshadowed by the Wind
July 11, 1961: For those of us who grew up watching baseball during the 1960s, it seemed that the NL’s starting outfield would consistently be, by birthright, Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, and Roberto Clemente. Oh, every once in a while, an intruder like Orlando Cepeda or Tommy Davis would have a good first half and steal one of those spots, but eventually all of the Big Three would get into the game. On this day at Candlestick Park, the game went into extra innings tied 3-3. In the top of the 10th, the AL scored an unearned run off the San Francisco Giants’ Stu Miller. In the bottom of the inning, the Big Three came through against AL pitcher Hoyt Wilhelm. Aaron, who didn’t start the game, pinch-hit for Miller, hit a single, and advanced to second on a passed ball. Mays followed and bounced a double over the third base bag to score Aaron. After Frank Robinson was plunked by a pitch, Clemente lined a single that reached right fielder Roger Maris on one hop to score Mays with the game-winner.
The game is best known, however, for how the AL tied it in the top of the ninth. With runners on first and second and one out, NL manager Danny Murtaugh called on Miller to pitch to Rocky Colavito. As Miller stood on the rubber ready to deliver his first pitch, the wind for which Candlestick was noted blew him off the mound. He delivered the pitch, but umpire Sam Landis ruled a balk, advancing the runners. Colavito then hit a grounder to third baseman Ken Boyer, whose throwing error allowed the run to score. The game didn’t make much of an impression on Frick, who was now commissioner and told the AP, “They played like little leaguers.”
Bo Knows
July 11, 1989: By the end of the first inning, the Kansas City Royals’ Bo Jackson had already had a great All-Star Game. With erstwhile Chicago Cubs broadcaster and former United States President Ronald Reagan in the NBC booth alongside Vin Scully, the top of the first ended with Jackson, who played football for the Los Angeles Raiders in the offseason, running down a long drive off the bat of Pedro Guerrero and making a spectacular catch, saving two runs. The bottom of the first began with Jackson hitting a 440-foot home run off the Giants’ Rick Reuschel, way up into the second-deck center field tarp at Anaheim Stadium. Everybody forgot what happened after that, including Wade Boggs following Jackson’s homer with one of his own. The AL won, 5-3.
After the game, Jackson told the press gaggle, “People in general, they don’t know Bo. I’ve been knowin’ Bo for 26 years. I know what Bo can do. I know what Bo can’t do. Bo can play football. Bo can play baseball. Bo don’t know a thing about basketball.”
Fit to be Tied
June 9, 2002: In one of the saddest and stupidest chapters in MLB history, the All-Star Game was tied 7-7 in the middle of the 11th inning, when rival managers Joe Torre and Bob Brenly sheepishly approached commissioner Bud Selig, seated in the front row at Miller Park, and informed him that they’d run out of pitchers. Selig could be seen throwing his arms in the air in disgust during the discussion. Finally, he declared that if the NL didn’t score in the bottom of the inning, the game would be declared a tie, and that’s what happened when the Seattle Mariners’ Freddy Garcia kept the NL off the scoreboard. What kind of stat should Garcia have been credited with? A hold/save? This writer can foresee the day when MLB no longer holds the All-Star Game for fear of a pitcher getting injured. Think it can’t happen? The NFL has already discontinued the Pro Bowl and the College All-Star Football Classic, the latter of which, by the way, was also created by Ward. You read it here first.
And Now For Something Completely Different
The same day, in Inverness, Florida, in a scenario fit for a B-movie on a late-night 1960s horror-host show, the family of Ted Williams was embroiled in a dispute over the disposition of the body of the recently deceased hitter. According to his daughter, Bobby-Jo Ferrell, Williams’ will specified cremation. The funeral home informed Ferrell that John-Henry Williams, Williams’ son and Ferrell’s half-brother, was in the process of transporting the body to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where bodies are frozen cryonically. Ferrell accused John Henry of wanting to preserve and sell her father’s DNA. She told the AP, “John Henry is trying to make money off my father’s dead body, and I’m not going to be quiet anymore.” Estate attorneys were planning on filing the will and asking a judge to rule on whether the body should be cremated or frozen.
Zimmer Seriously Injured
July 7, 1953: Shortstop and cleanup hitter Don Zimmer of the St. Paul Saints suffered a skull fracture when he was struck in the head by a pitch from the Columbus Red Birds’ James Kirk in an American Association game. It left Zimmer in a coma for 12 days, during which he underwent two surgeries. Doctors drilled holes in the left side of his skull and inserted titanium buttons to relieve pressure. For the rest of Zimmer’s life, a rumor persisted that Zimmer had a steel plate inserted in his skull. It wasn’t true, but apparently Zimmer got tired of denying it. Despite the effect the injury had on his career, Zimmer took pride in the fact that he never cashed a paycheck from an employer outside of baseball.
Lambs Win. . . I Think
July 8, 1891: In a Western Association matchup, the Omaha Lambs defeated the Milwaukee Brewers to gain first place. The score? Who knows? The exact date? Debatable. In any case, always amused at what passed for sportswriting in the 19th century, I give you the game story (which had my free Grammarly tool working harder than it had ever worked) by Sandy Griswold of the Omaha Bee that appeared that day, doing my best to fill in the blanks where I could: “First of all, manager Dan cracked out a beauty, over [Bill] Traffley’s palatial mansion, for a ticket round the globe. That drove the crowd wild with joy. But when [Jocko] Halligan hit safe, and Georgie Schoch’s fumble gave Sut. a breathing spell, and the Deacon got first on balls, and Papa pushed out a single, and Champion’s blunder put Larry [Twitchell?] on base, and the Professor met one just right, and [Dan] Shannon got there by forcing the Commodore, and Shannon began all over again with a double, and only seven men cantered in excursion parties over the rubber, you’d have thought the world was on fire.” Got all that?
Casey Baffles Congress with Stengelese
July 9, 1958: The United States Senate Anti-Trust [sic] and Monopoly Subcommittee held a hearing to determine whether MLB should retain its exemption from the antitrust laws. As even back then, Congress never met an issue that it couldn’t turn into a circus, it invited noted legal experts Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, and Ted Williams to testify. In the famous photo that ran in newspapers across the country, a bespectacled Stengel is seen pontificating, finger in the air, while in the background Mantle looks as if he’s suppressing a chuckle and Williams looks bored and displeased, as if he were wishing he were taking batting practice instead. Stengel’s rambling, 90-minute testimony kept the subcommittee members amused without directly answering questions about the antitrust legislation. A few highlights:
“I had many years that I was not so successful as a ballplayer, as it is a game of skill. And then I was no doubt discharged by baseball in which I had to go back to the minor leagues as a manager, and after being in the minor leagues as a manager, I became a major league manager in several cities and was discharged, we call it “discharged,” because there is no question I had to leave.”
“I would say that they are mad at us in Chicago, we fill the parks. They have come out to see good material. I will say they are mad at us in Kansas City, but we broke their attendance record. Now on the road, we only get possibly 27 cents. I am not positive of these figures, as I am not an official. If you go back fifteen years or if I owned stock in the club, I would give them to you.”
“We have an instructional school, regardless of my English, we have got an instructional school.”
“Now, too many players is a funny thing, it cost like everything. I said just like I made a talk not long ago and I told them all when they were drinking and they invited me in, I said, ‘You ought to be home. You men are not making enough money. You cannot drink like that.’ They said, ‘This is a holiday for the Shell Oil Company,’ and I said, ‘Why is that a holiday?’ and they said, ‘We did something great for three years and we are given two days off to watch the Yankees play the White Sox,’ but they were mostly White Sox rooters. I said, ‘You are not doing right.’ I said, ‘You can’t take all those drinks and all even on your holidays. You ought to be home and raising more children because big league clubs now give you a hundred thousand for a bonus to go into baseball.’ And by the way, I don’t happen to have any children but I wish Mrs. Stengel and I had eight. I’d like to put them in on that bonus rule.”
When Stengel had finished, Mantle was called to testify. Asked whether he had any observations at the start, to much laughter, Mantle said, “My views are about the same as Casey’s.”
Good Night, Mrs. Calabash, Wherever You Are
July 10, 1961: The expansionist Houston Colt .45s, who would begin play in 1962, signed minor league infielder Jimmy Durante. No, not this guy:
Sandy Koufax meets with Legendary Entertainer Jimmy Durante during 1955 Spring Training. Koufax won the World Series in Brooklyn in his 1955 rookie season. pic.twitter.com/VS3IiYy7IB
— Baseball In Pics (@baseballinpix) May 17, 2026
The less-famous Durante played Class D ball in the Milwaukee Braves’ system in 1961. This was his only season in professional baseball.
Hammerin’ Hank Walks It Off
July 11, 1976: In the second game of a doubleheader against the Texas Rangers at County Stadium, Milwaukee Brewers designated hitter Henry Aaron was the hero when he won the game, 5-4, with a solo home run in the bottom of the 10th inning off lefty Steve Foucault. It was career home run number 754 for the then-all-time home run king, who’d already announced that 1976 would be his final season. Most of the 28,149 fans remained and cheered after the home team had disappeared into its clubhouse. Aaron returned to the field to acknowledge the fans. Brewers manager Alex Grammas followed behind to take in the moment. “I heard on the radio the fans were cheering for me,” explained Aaron to United Press International. “You can’t imagine what a great feeling that was. They’ve always been great to me here.” Aaron, who played in this same ballpark when he began his career with the Braves, said, “The home run I hit in 1957 against the St. Louis Cardinals, which won the pennant, was my biggest thrill here. But I’d have to say this one ranks second.”
