Combing through the 80-plus year history of the MLB All-Star Game to find the most memorable games.
There are so many great moments in the Major League Baseball All-Star Game history that dwindling down to five games is difficult. Needless to say, one or two games will invariably be left out.
Yet our task remains to bring the most memorable, the ones that stand above the rest and truly shine.
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Memorable doesn’t necessarily mean the best, if we’re talking literally. Certainly, if you put five of us in a room, we would not unanimously agree on five games that we thought were the best. Hence are the most memorable.
Memorable also brings with its own set of biases, most notably recency bias.
I myself am only 28-years-old, so I’m naturally going to be inclined to remember games played in my childhood and into my more formative years up to now.
I cheated a bit to include one game I don’t remember, and in fact even my father—who really introduced me to this wonderful game of baseball—would not remember because he too was not alive when it was played.
But it was one of the best, and as believer in looking at history—if for no other reason than appreciation—I think we should go back to take in what was probably the best All-Star Game ever played, and allow it to become memorable to us as well.
We’ll get to that particular game in short order. But there can sometimes also be a harsh reaction against recency bias to the extent we deem our more recent events as not standing up to the past. I am more likely to commit this research sin than I am to be swayed by recency bias.
Let’s not make that mistake here either. It is true some of the All-Star Games played in this generation, or the one directly preceding were memorable and great games.
They were memorable often, more because of the moments which were what you’d generally consider superfluous to the game. But an All-Star Game is not supposed to be about the final score. It is about the event itself, about great moments that make you smile and laugh or cry or yell and scream at the television set because what just happened should never happen (you can likely guess which All-Star Game I’m referencing with that final clause).
Without further ado, here are, in my opinion, the five most memorable Major League Baseball All-Star Games among the first 85 which have been played.
Next: At least up to the 2nd inning, probably the most memorable ASG ever