The All-Star Game's origin story

Every July, the same debate returns: Does the MLB All-Star Game still matter? Some see nostalgia. Others see TV ratings, marketing and an exhibition that no longer counts.

But the deeper, largely forgotten story is its origin — at a gathering built around remembrance.

Long before Major League Baseball formalized the All-Star Game in 1933, thousands gathered at Fenway Park in September 1917 for a benefit exhibition honoring Tim Murnane. A former player-turned-writer, for three decades he had been the voice of baseball in Boston, chronicling its triumphs and shaping how generations of fans understood the sport. His death of a heart attack months earlier at 65 left behind a widow and young children. Players crossed leagues and traveled long distances, at their own expense, to honor him. Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Tris Speaker and Shoeless Joe Jackson all came. More than 17,000 people filled the ballpark not for a pennant race or championship, but to collectively acknowledge a man who had helped build the game — and to raise money for his family.

That instinct — to stop long enough to honor contributors — became embedded in the DNA of the modern All-Star Game.

The point was never merely assembling talent. Baseball already had standings for that. The point was recognition. Public gratitude. A civic roll call. That purpose still survives, even if we sometimes forget it beneath the television spectacle.

The game reminds us, even if indirectly, that greatness is never self-created. Every superstar emerges from an unseen ecosystem of labor, including scouts, coaches, parents, teammates, minor leaguers, beat writers and fans who carried the game forward before anyone knew that player.

That feels quaint now. Modern America has become less practiced at collective gratitude. We celebrate marketability, virality and winning. Rituals devoted simply to recognition have largely disappeared.

Which is why the recurring complaint that the All-Star Game is “meaningless” misses the point entirely.

Of course it is meaningless in the standings. In that sense, so are funerals, retirement ceremonies, standing ovations and Hall of Fame inductions. They do not change the score. Civilizations create such rituals because human beings need moments when achievement is elevated above the pressing day-to-day.

Baseball has long understood this. Its leisurely pace invites storytelling. A grandfather can explain Mickey Mantle to a grandchild watching Aaron Judge. Past and present comfortably coexist. That is why the moments people remember are rarely the final score.

They remember Ted Williams at Fenway Park in 1999, as the game’s biggest stars gathered around him like children meeting a hero. They remember Cal Ripken Jr. turning his final All-Star Game into one last moment of grace. They remember old legends introduced one by one as entire stadiums rose to applaud men many fans had never actually seen play.

What people remember is continuity.

Our country increasingly lacks institutions capable of producing that feeling. Yet every July, millions still gather around a sporting event built not merely to determine superiority, but to acknowledge inheritance.

At the 1917 exhibition for Tim Murnane, the game paused to recognize one of its builders. The crowd gathered not simply to watch baseball, but to participate in its memory.

More than a century later, the modern All-Star Game still carries traces of that inheritance beneath the sponsorships and branding.

Perhaps that is the real reason the event endures. Not because the outcome matters. But because remembrance does.

This guest essay reflects the views of Scott D. Reich, of Port Washington, an attorney and author of the new book “One Day in September: Baseball, Brotherhood, and the Birth of the All-Star Game.”