MLB All Star Game tickets

As North American all-star goggles go, Major League Baseball's All-Star Game is the model for all the others. Nothing like the NFL's Pro Bowl, baseball's version of showing off has been a midsummer hit since its start in Chicago's Comiskey Park in 1933. And unlike the NBA and NHL games, baseball's All-Star Game has not been cancelled because of labor disputes. The idea of an all-star game owes itself to Arch Ward, a Chicago Tribune sports editor, who wanted baseball to participate in the "Century of Progress" Expo being held in the summer of 1933 in Chicago. He nagged enough to get the leagues to set up a vote for the all-stars, and managers and fans chose a good gathering of the nation's hottest players, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Frankie Frisch among them. Though Babe Ruth was in the twilight of his career, he hit the first All-Star home run. The game was an economic success; Comiskey Park sold more than 49,000 tickets.

Over the years, the All-Star Game has undergone more tinkering than any other part of Major League Baseball. The voting for All-Star honors has swung between managers and fans: for the first two games, managers and fans selected the players. For the next twelve years, the managers had the sole responsibility for stocking the team.The 2002 All-Star Game brought argument into the course, when the managers used up their pitchers to satisfy the ticket holders but wound up angering the crowd when the game went into extra innings and had to be called off as a tie after 11 innings. To encourage managers and fans to think of the All-Star Game as a "real" game, Commissioner Bud Selig proposed that, beginning in 2003, home-field advantage for the World Series be earned by winning the All-Star Game. Baseball's All-Star Game rotates among the different cities with teams as in most pro-ball. In baseball, it also alternates between leagues. With the frenzy of building that has led to new baseball parks in Philadelphia, Houston and Detroit, among other cities, Major League Baseball has chosen to show off these new parks as venues for the All-Star Game. When you buy your tickets for the Midsummer Classic, you can expect to be sitting in brand-new seats for the next several years.