When Midsummer Had Two Classics (Published 2008) (2024)

From 1959 to 1962, something very strange happened in baseball.

The American and National Leagues played two All-Star Games each year.

It was a slightly daffy idea that sounds nothing but harebrained in retrospect. Who needed a second Midsummer Classic that wasn’t always a classic? Those were the days before interleague play, days when baseball lore tells us players from each league were raring to whip their rivals, and league presidents delivered pep talks to stoke the players’ juices.

But there was a simple and obvious reason to play two games: money.

“If no dollars were involved,” Commissioner Ford Frick said in 1959, “we wouldn’t play it. However, in my heart, I know it’s not a greedy grab as some have called it.”

The primary reason for the second game was to put more money into the players’ pension fund. According to a news report at the time, baseball had fallen behind in some payments, and a second game would finance the shortfall, and then some.

“The players were looking to address their pocketbooks,” said John Thorn, a baseball historian. “They weren’t thinking that the two games diluted the All-Star Game.”

Marvin Miller, who would later become the head of the players union, said that the financial records he eventually found showed increased revenues to the pension fund.