The Major League Baseball All-Star Games of the Fifties
1950- Comiskey Park in Chicago was the site of the Major League Baseball All-Star Game as the Fifties kicked off, on July 11th. The game became the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game to go into extra innings, as the Americans blew a 3-2 lead in the ninth. With the Tigers’ Art Houtteman on the hill, in his third inning of work in the top of the ninth, Pirates’ slugger Ralph Kiner stepped to the plate. Kiner, who never got into many big spots with lowly Pittsburgh, perennial finishers in the second division, belted perhaps the biggest home run of his life to tie the game. The game remained that way all the way into the fourteenth frame, when the Cardinals’ Red Schoendienst hit a homer to give the National League a 4-3 Major League Baseball All-Star Game triumph. Notables Roy Campanella, George Kell, and Stan Musial combined to go hitless in 17 at bats, while Schoendienst sat on the bench for ten innings before coming in for the great Jackie Robinson to play second. On a down note, American league superstar Ted Williams crashed into the outfield wall chasing a fly ball; the resulting injury to his elbow would keep him out of action until the middle of September.
1951- The National League side simply overpowered the American in this Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Detroit’s Briggs Stadium on July 10th. Long balls by Bob Elliott, Stan Musial, Gil Hodges, and Ralph Kiner once more proved too much to overcome for the AL, which got homers from Vic Wertz and George Kell. For Kiner, it was the third straight Major League Baseball All-Star Game in which he clouted a home run. The Bucs’ strongman would become a baseball announcer when his playing days were through, providing fans with such gem quotes as, “Hello, everybody. Welcome to Kiner’s Corner. This is….uh. I’m…uh” and “On Fathers Day, we again wish you all happy birthday.” The National League’s 8-3 win had cut their Major League Baseball All-Star Game deficit now to 12-6 in favor of the AL.
1952- Whereas the 1951 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was the first extra inning affair, the 1952 version, played at Philly’s Shibe Park on July 8th, was the first to be shortened by rain. The National League took a 3-2 lead on the Cubs’ Hank Sauer’s two-run homer in the bottom of the fourth, and was declared the victor when the skies opened up after the fifth was played. Sauer, who would hit 37 homers in 1952 and knock in 137 runs, was in the prime of a solid career. His Major League Baseball All-Star Game winning round tripper would be his most memorable, as the teams he played on, especially the Baby Bears, never got to the post-season.
1953- On July 14th the National League cut the discrepancy to 12-8, with a 5-1 beating of the American League in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The contest, played on July 14th at Cincy’s Crosley Field, featured one of the greatest Major League Baseball All-Star Game defensive plays ever made, as Enos Slaughter of the Cardinals made a diving stab of a ball down the right field line. Casey Stengal of the Yankees, the losing manager now of four Major League Baseball All-Star Games in a row, would declare, “I don’t understand it. In October I’m beautiful, but in July I’m ugly.” The pennant winning managers are the ones with the job of skippering the Major League Baseball All-Star Game squads the following season, a job that Stengal earned nine times because of Yankee dominance.
1954- The American League finally won a Major League Baseball All-Star Game under Stengal, on July 13th at Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. Six home runs highlighted the 11-9 slugfest, won by the AL when White Sox star Nellie Fox singled in two runs after Cleveland’s Larry Doby had brought the crowd to its feet with a game tying pinch hit homer in the bottom of the eighth inning. Gus Bell and Ted Kluzewski of the National side, and Doby, Ray Boone, and Al Rosen, who hit two, all homered, tying the Major League Baseball All-Star Game record of six in a game. In an odd coincidence, Bell and Boone, who both hit the ball out of the park, would have sons who would be standouts in the majors, Buddy Bell and Bob Boone, who in turn would have children that played and some that are still playing today. David Bell plays third for the Phillies, and Bret Boone played for years with the Mariners, himself a participant in Major League Baseball All-Star Games. Oh, and Red Sox fans are familiar with Ray Boone’s other ball playing grandson. His name? Aaron Boone.
1955- County Stadium in Milwaukee hosted its first Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 12th. The National League was in the doldrums most of the game, losing 5-0 to the AL, which got Mickey Mantle’s first Major League Baseball All-Star Game home run in the first frame, until their bats came alive in the seventh and eighth innings. They tied the score and the tilt went all the way to the twelfth. Stan Musial, leading off the bottom of the 12th, took a first pitch fastball from the Red Sox Frank Sullivan and cranked it over the fence, to give the NL an exciting 6-5 conquest. Sullivan, who was a pretty good pitcher most of his Boston days, eventually went to the lowly Phillies, where in 1961 he went an abysmal 3-16, causing him to wind up his career with a losing 97-100 record. Sullivan told a reporter during that awful season, “I am in the twilight of a mediocre career.”
1956- Home runs by four remarkable Hall of Famers were featured in this Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which occurred on July 10th in Washington. Willie Mays and Stan Musial clocked homers for the victorious NL, while Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle hit them for the opposition. The National League’s 7-3 win now narrowed the gap to 13-10 for the AL. The Braves’ Warren Spahn faced only three batters in the sixth before giving way to New York Giants’ twenty game winner Johnny Antonelli. Spahn walked Nellie Fox and then gave up Williams’ homer. The next batter, Mantle, in the midst of his wonderful Triple Crown season, then hit a ball almost out of Griffith Stadium, one of the longest home runs ever poled in a Major League Baseball All-Star Game. This prompted NL skipper Walter Alston to go and get Spahn, before any more damage could be applied. Alston, who ran the Dodgers until retiring in 1976, once mused about his life in baseball, “It’s not the winters that bother me, it’s the summers.”
1957- Minnie Minoso of the White Sox almost single-handedly won the 1957 Major League Baseball All-Star Game for the American League. He doubled in the last run of a three run ninth inning rally to give the AL a seemingly comfortable 6-2 lead on July 9th at Sportsman Park. However, the Nationals rallied as well, but when Ernie Banks singled in a run to make it 6-5, Minoso picked up the ball and threw Gus Bell out at third. He then capped his dazzling inning by making a circus catch of a Gil Hodges drive to end the fray. Minoso, the “Cuban Comet”, should be in the Hall of Fame, based on his playing days and his contributions to the game. The National League commissioner, Ford Frick, was furious when Cincinnati fans stuffed the ballot box to get many of their Reds onto the starting team. Frick decided to sit Gus Bell and Wally Post down from starting and said, “I can take it if we lose, but I strongly object to our league making a burlesque out of the (Major League Baseball) All-Star Game.”
1958- This Major League Baseball All-Star Game proved so boring that a change would be made to the format the next year to rejuvenate fan interest. The American League won 4-3 at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium on July 8th, in a contest that was the first Major League Baseball All-Star Game to have no extra-base hits. The National League managed one hit after the second inning and lost because Gil McDougald of the Yankees singled in the eventual game winner in the sixth. Vice-President Richard Nixon threw out the first pitch and prophetically told the press later, “I never leave a game before the last pitch, because in baseball, as in life and especially politics, you never know what will happen.”
1959. To spice things up, two Major League Baseball All-Star Games were played in 1959, one on July 7th at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, and the other on August 3rd in the Coliseum in Los Angeles. This duo of Major League Baseball All-Star Games would go on until the idea was scrapped in 1963. In the initial Major League Baseball All-Star Game of 1959, Don Drysdale made the first of his eight All-Star Game appearances and pitched perfect ball for three innings. Willie Mays won the game for the NL when he tripled in the winning run off Whitey Ford in the eighth. Eddie Matthews of Milwaukee and Al Kaline of the Tigers hit homers. In the second Major League Baseball All-Star Game of 1959, held almost a month later, the American League prevailed, 5-3. Drysdale was roughed up for three runs early and was the losing pitcher, while home runs were hit for the AL by such stalwarts as Yogi Berra and Rocky Colavito. In 26 Major League Baseball All-Star Games, the AL now had a 16-11 advantage, one the National League was going to wipe out completely and more by the time the Sixties were over.
