It’s been a while, but there was a time when Major League Baseball presented two All-Star Games a season.
On July 6, 1933, the first all-star game to be scheduled between the National and American Leagues was intended as a one-time spectacular. With the game scheduled at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, this never-before match-up between America’s premiere professional baseball leagues was intended to add intrigue to the World’s Fair taking place that year.
At that time, there was no interleague play.
As the game was a hit with fans, club owners made the clash between leagues an annual event. Since the inaugural game at Comiskey that drew 49,200, and featured such top performers as Babe Ruth, Joe Cronin, Lou Gehrig, and Bill Terry, only twice has the mid-summer classic been paused. During the 2020 season, due to the COVID-19 pandemic no game was played. In 1945, due to travel restrictions during World War II, the July 10th game schedule at Boston’s Fenway Park was not played.
For some, a little-remembered nugget of history surrounding MLB’s All-Star Game is that two classics were scheduled each season from 1959 to 1962.
Hall of Famer Jim Kaat, who, as a pitcher, was selected to three American League all-star teams during his 25 MLB seasons, was part of the 1962 troupe that entertained baseball fans at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on July 30. Just 20 days earlier, the first 1962 all-star game was played in Washington, D.C., and won by the National League. For Kaat, as a 23-year-old enjoying his fourth campaign in the Major Leagues with the Minnesota Twins, just being selected to the club and sharing a clubhouse with some of the game’s greatest players, albeit for one game, was an honor he cherishes still today.
“The second game was added so more money could be contributed to the players’ pension fund by the club owners. After my first all-star appearance, the owners started giving more of a percentage of the game to the players’ fund because the TV rights paid by the networks started getting bigger,” Kaat told The Epoch Times on Friday July 12, 2024.
The way Kaat, a winner of 283 games, learned he was selected for the second all-star game is unusual by today’s standards. While fans vote for the starting nine lineups for Tuesday’s game at Globe Life Field in Texas, for Kaat word came by way of the United States Postal Service.
“I'll tell you how I found out. I received a nice letter from Ralph Houk (American League Manager) saying I had been selected for the second all-star game.”
He now considers it a career highlight to have been selected to dress for the last second all-star game presented by MLB in a single season, and seeing Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Al Kaline.
“It was kind of bad timing for me going to Chicago,” remembers Kaat of the game at Wrigley that drew 38,359. “A few days before I received Houk’s letter, I was hit in the mouth with a one-hopper.”
The ball hit by Detroit Tigers’ Bubba Morton caused Kaat to lose three front teeth, and required sutures to his mouth.
The 1962 second all-star game’s lineup featured 23 future hall of famers, including umpire Jocko Conlan.
When pausing to rethink one of the first baseball honors bestowed upon him, since making his debut in 1959 with the Washington Senators, Kaat struggles to remember if any memento was given to participants.
“I don’t think we (players) received any kind of gift. Back then, they (MLB) didn’t make as big a deal as today in making the game. They squeezed the all-star game in between the regular season. I flew in for the game, and the next day my team was playing a regular season game.”
What really is a telling sign of how times have changed is the compensation players receive for appearing in the MLB All-Star Game. Today, players receive a $1,000 cash stipend, among other gifts including regular season meal money ($117.50 per day). Kaat’s reward for being selected for the second all-star game in 1962 - no extra pay.
“We weren’t paid for anything. It was just an honor to be there. Obviously, they (owners) paid our expenses.”
With the two-game format for All-Star play long gone, for Kaat, just being included in one of the games during the 1962 season (Kaat also was selected for All-Star Games in 1966 and 1975) brings back wonderful memories of his father. Growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, a time when baseball was truly America’s favorite pastime, Kaat and his father spent many hours listening to games on the radio.
“I was raised on baseball history,” explains Kaat, a winner of 16 Gold Glove Awards. “My dad drove from our home in Michigan in 1947, so he could be in Cooperstown when Lefty Grove was inducted in the Hall of Fame.”
Being selected for MLB’s second All-Star Game during the four seasons that they paraded their top stars before their public in no way diminished the value of player talents. Kaat represented the Twins in the 1962 game, didn’t get his spikes dirty, and went on to a Hall of Fame career.
