The Major League Baseball All-Star Games of the Fifties

The 12-4 advantage that the American League held over the National League in the sixteen Major League All-Star Games that had been played up until 1950 was a cause of concern for the NL brass. They were afraid that if the losing continued at the Major League Baseball All-Star Game that their circuit would become "irrelevant". They need not have worried though, as the decade of the Fifties would be ushered in with a plethora of new National League standouts, many of them African-American, which would help tip the Major League Baseball All-Star Game scales in favor of the NL.

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.