Deane: The All-Star Game that wasn’t
From SABR member Bill Deane at WordPress on July 8, 2017:
The Major League All-Star Game has been held each year since 1933, with one exception. If you check the record books for the result of the 1945 contest, you will see something like “Game canceled due to wartime travel restrictions.” But, who decided that there would be no game? And when? Was anything held in its stead?
The game was scheduled. It was to be played at Boston’s Fenway Park on Tuesday, July 10. Even after the contest was nixed in February, schedule-makers left the dates of July 9-11 open in hopes that circumstances might change by then.
During the winter of 1944-45, America’s involvement in World War II was at its most critical stage. Although President Franklin Roosevelt had given the “green light” for baseball to continue three years earlier, times had changed, and there was serious doubt as to whether the 1945 season would be held at all. The game had no commissioner, following Kenesaw Landis’s death on November 25, 1944, and most of its biggest stars – Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Bob Feller, Joe DiMaggio, et al – were in military service.
Read the full article here: https://dizzydeane.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/the-all-star-game-that-wasnt/
Originally published: July 11, 2017. Last Updated: July 11, 2017.