Major League Baseball All-Star Game

The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) and contested between the all-stars from the American League (AL) and National League (NL). Starting fielders are selected by fans, pitchers are selected by managers, and reserves are selected by players and managers.

The game is usually played on the second or third Tuesday in July, and is meant to mark the symbolic halfway point of the MLB season (though not the mathematical halfway point, which, for most seasons, falls within the previous calendar week). Both leagues share an All-Star break, with no regular-season games scheduled from the day before through two days after the All-Star Game, with the exception of a single Thursday night game starting in the 2018 season. Some additional events and festivities associated with the game take place each year close to and during this break in the regular season.

No official MLB All-Star Games were held in 1945 and 2020, and no official selection of players took place, due to World War II travel restrictions and the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Two All-Star Games were held each season from 1959 to 1962. The most recent All-Star Game was held on July 15, 2025, at Truist Park in Cumberland, home of the NL's Atlanta Braves.

Baseball teams put on benefit games for the families of players who died unexpectedly. For example, the Addie Joss Benefit Game in 1911 raised $12,914 for the Joss family ($435,801 in current dollar terms).

The first All-Star Game was held on July 6, 1933, at Comiskey Park in Chicago as part of the 1933 World's Fair, and was initiated by Arch Ward, then sports editor for the Chicago Tribune, and supported by American League president Will Harridge, who lobbied baseball executives to create the event. Initially intended to be a one-time event, its success resulted in making the contest an annual one.

From 1959 to 1962, two All-Star Games were held each season, in order to increase the money going to the players' pension fund. This practice ended after the owners agreed to give the players a larger share of the income from a single game.

According to the Baseball Database provided by Sean Lahman, a total of 2,040 individual players have been selected for an All-Star game between 1933 and 2025.

MLB chooses the venue for the All-Star Game. The criteria for venue selection are subjective; generally, cities with new ballparks and those who have not hosted the Game in many years – or ever – tend to get selected. Over time, this has resulted in certain cities being selected to host more often than others. Cleveland Stadium and the original Yankee Stadium have each hosted four All-Star Games, the most of any venue, and New York City has hosted more Games than any other city, having done so nine times in five different stadiums. At the same time, the New York Mets did not host for 48 seasons (1965–2012), while the Los Angeles Dodgers did not host for 42 years, (1980–2022). (The Dodgers were scheduled to host the 2020 Major League Baseball All-Star Game before it was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic.) The Tampa Bay Rays are currently the only club yet to host an All-Star Game, and two other teams have never hosted the All-Star Game at their current stadium: The New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium and the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizens Bank Park (but scheduled for 2026). Three teams have won the World Series in the same year their stadium hosted the All-Star Game: the 1939 New York Yankees, the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers, and the 1977 New York Yankees.