Tomorrow marks 79th anniversary of first MLB All-Star Game

Tomorrow – July 6 – marks the 79th anniversary of the first ever Major League Baseball All-Star Game, which was played on that date in 1933 at Comiskey Park in Chicago.

This year’s MLB All-Star Game will be played this coming Tues., July 10, at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.

I’ve never been to a MLB All-Star game, but it’s something I’ve always wanted to watch in person. I’ve even got it on my “bucket list.”

I grew up hearing stories from my dad about the time that he got to attend the All-Star Game at the Houston Astrodome in July 1968, way back when that stadium, aka, the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” was just three years old and still relatively new. That All-Star Game was remarkable because it was the first to be played indoors.

My dad seemed to have been most impressed by a pre-game skills exhibition in which Cincinnati Reds catcher Johnny Bench rocketed ball after ball from home plate through holes in a cardboard cutout at second base.

That All-Star Game was the first of 14 all-star appearances for Bench, who retired in 1983. ESPN would later name Bench as the “greatest catcher in baseball history.”

Needless to say, much has changed since that first All-Star Game in 1933, and all-star voting has come a long way. Nowadays, you can vote for your favorite players online and follow the balloting on Major League Baseball’s snazzy website.

I vividly remember going to Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta as a kid and seeing piles and piles of paper all-star ballots stacked in the concourses. That was back in the early 80s and in those days, you voted by punching a paper “chad” out of a circle beside your favorite player’s name. You’d then put your ballot in a box, and I guess that someone later would collect the ballots and feed them into a computer, which would count your vote.

I remember the third-grade version of me feeling like a big dog when I filled out a ballot on that day and dropped it in the ballot box. I don’t even remember who I voted for, but I wished I’d brought a blank ballot home and saved it, so I could show it to my kids today. That would be kind of cool.

I can remember going to a handful of Braves games as a kid, and when I was in junior high school, my favorite player was San Francisco Giants first baseman, Will “The Thrill” Clark.

I probably read the sports pages more closely back in those days than I do now, and I’d known weeks in advance that the Giants would be playing in Atlanta. My dad surprised my brothers and my by taking us to a Sunday game, but as things go, Clark didn’t play in the game because manager Roger Craig decided to rest him.

We still got to see some pretty good players though that day. Sports fans in the audience will remember how good the Giants were back in the late 80s. Players on the team included Clark, Brett Butler, Kevin Mitchell, Candy Maldonado and Matt Williams. It was around that time that the Giants faced Oakland in the famous 1989 World Series, which was interrupted by a 7.1-magnitude earthquake.