The First All-Star Game

Acclaimed journalist Randall Sullivan brilliantly renders a snapshot of America struggling to find its footing amid the ravages of the Great Depression, told through the story of the first all-star baseball game in Major League history

In July of 1933, America was at or near the lowest point in its history. It was revived, in part, by a World’s Fair staged in the city of Chicago and the baseball game that became the centerpiece of it.

Franklin Roosevelt had been inaugurated president four months earlier, at virtually the same moment Adolph Hitler became chancellor of Germany. The world and the country seemed to be at a tipping point. With whispers of the danger gathering in Europe just beginning to cross the Atlantic, American cities were filled with cardboard and tar paper shantytowns called “Hoovervilles.” Tens of thousands of young men took to riding the rails as a way of life while their younger siblings stood with their parents in breadlines. The state of America was so bleak that even the country’s national pastime, baseball, was suffering a loss of fans and revenue that threatened its continued existence.

An attempted assassination of Franklin Roosevelt that resulted in the death of Chicago’s mayor triggered a series of events that led, almost miraculously, to the idea that a contest pitting baseball’s greatest stars against one another might revive the sport, the city and the United States itself. In a moment that lifted the spirits of the whole country, Babe Ruth, on his last legs as a player, would rise to the occasion as the star of this historic contest.

The First All-Star Game is the story of baseball’s centrality in American history, and of a game that was expected to be a singular event but has been held annually for almost a century. But it is also the story of America in the early years of the Great Depression, told through a cast of characters that features Babe Ruth and Franklin Roosevelt, but includes as well Al Capone, Charles Lindbergh, Sally Rand, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, and all of the legendary players and managers who took part in what was called The Game of the Century.