t Major League Baseball's first official All-Star Game in 1933, there was no Home Run Derby contest featuring Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe Cronin, and the other leading sluggers of the day. No cavernous exhibition hall near Comiskey Park in Chicago was filled with baseball memorabilia and touring fans.
Newspapers did report that more than the usual number of spectators turned out early to watch players from the National and American Leagues practice. But there really was little more to the first All-Star Game than the game itself.
Indeed, Cronin would recall 50 years later that the first All-Star Game also was supposed to be the last. Billed as the ''Dream Game'' or ''Game of the Century,'' organizers said they wanted to play it during World's Fair in Chicago to bolster the spirit of a nation - and the finances of Major League Baseball - in the fourth year of the Depression.
''We also considered it a great honor then because we thought it would be the one and only All-Star Game,'' Cronin said, in 1983.
As certainly as the event has endured, it has evolved into far more than just the game. ''I really think that in the last five years, the All-Star Game has become a great spectacle,'' said baseball commissioner Bud Selig. ''It's important in terms of what it does for us as a wonderful way of showing off all that is good about baseball, right in the middle of the season.''
Today, the All-Star Game is part of a five-day festival that celebrates the sport of baseball, something far larger and more elaborate than Joe Cronin ever could have imagined. What Major League Baseball has planned for fans in Boston, beginning today with the opening of the John Hancock All-Star FanFest, is the closest thing to the hoopla of a Super Bowl that this city, with no domed football stadium, is likely to experience.
Like the Super Bowl - and unlike the World Series, NBA Finals, or Stanley Cup playoffs - the All-Star Game is awarded to a city years in advance. It allows time for organizers to plan all of the events that surround the game.
Spurred by the desire to promote the sport, the need to offer sponsors a valuable opportunity to leverage their investment and concerned that not all fans are rich or quick enough to buy tickets, baseball officials have gone to extraordinary lengths in this decade to make certain that the All-Star Game is more than just the game.
''The first All-Star Game I saw was in 1950 at Comiskey Park,'' Selig recalled. ''That is the game that Ted Williams broke his elbow, banging into a wall. It was just a game in those days. You just played the game.''
For a long time, that was more than sufficient for the fans and for Major League Baseball.
Baseball's All-Star Game generally provides more action and more memorable moments than All-Star games in the other major sports. Players and observers often theorize that, unlike football, basketball, and hockey, it is easier in the more individualistic sport of baseball to play a well-executed game despite the severely limited time to practice with teammates. It feels more like a game than an exhibition.
And it is one reason why Williams ran into a wall in 1950 to field a ball, nearly ending his career. Williams has said that he always made it a point of personal pride to play hard in All-Star Games. That motivation provided fans with some memorable moments, including the winning home run in Detroit in 1941 that left Williams clapping his hands and prancing around the bases like a young deer, and a home run off ''eephus ball'' pitcher Rip Sewell in 1946 at Fenway Park, Williams's second homer of the game.
There were other great individual performances, preeminently, Carl Hubbell striking out five consecutive future members of the Hall of Fame, including Cronin, in 1934. The athletic achievements seemed to be all the All-Star marketing Major League Baseball needed until television brought the midsummer classic into the nation's living rooms.
But by the 1990s, officials saw that others were doing more to maximize revenue and to burnish the brand of their sports, and they decided to do the same.
''It followed the model that was established by the NBA and, in some ways, Super Bowl weekend,'' said Abraham Madkour, editor-in-chief of The Sports Business Daily. ''In many ways the NBA was the first to pioneer this All-Star week concept, saying that we'll make it a full week and a celebration of our game and our sport. We'll create an avenue where people who can't afford to go to the game will really partake and enjoy the celebration.''
For the NBA, the diversification and expansion of its All-Star Game started with the dunking contest. Baseball's version is the Home Run Derby.
But baseball also has broken some significant ground along the way, too. It was the first sport to sponsor the FanFest, a huge, interactive exhibition that annually receives rave reviews. In Denver last year, 80,000 fans attended. More than 80,000 are expected at the John Hancock FanFest this weekend at the Hynes Convention Center. Basketball, football, and hockey all have launched similar events since the first baseball FanFest in Toronto in 1991.
''It was in development for three years before that,'' said Drew Sheinman, who created and produced that first FanFest. ''The idea came in part from some of the minor league teams that had developed local baseball carnivals with some interactive elements.''
Sheinman, who had been a vice president for marketing for both the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Mets, said FanFest is a way of broadening the reach of the All-Star Game. ''There's no question that it's very difficult when an All-Star Game comes to a local market and there's a limited number of tickets - especially in Boston, with Fenway Park,'' he said. ''You really want to give the community the opportunity to embrace the big event, to bring this sport to the fans, and enhance the whole brand positioning of Major League Baseball. This made a public event out of what is, in some ways, a private game.''
This year, in addition to the FanFest and the Home Run Derby, nine other events will be held in conjunction with the All-Star Game. For the first time, an entire day of festivities will be created by adding the All-Star Futures Game to the inventory, and pairing it with the All-Star Celebrity Hitting Challenge on Sunday.
Officials of Major League Baseball would not disclose any of the financing of the All-Star events. But Selig and others said it is much less a money-making proposition than a promotional event.
''Not even in the wildest scheme can you come up with a way to make money on this,'' said Larry Cancro, vice president for marketing for the Red Sox. ''It's promotional, absolutely. It's a wonderful payback for the cities that have supported you, and it brings to the forefront the importance of the Red Sox, because you can see in one three-day period that there's a tourism component to our existence here.''
In fact, a memorandum from Major League Baseball, seen by local officials in Boston, reveals that Major League Baseball does not always break even on the All-Star Game revenues and costs. According to officials who have seen the memo:
In Cleveland in 1997, Major League Baseball spent $2.4 million, and revenues fell $153,000 short.
In Philadelphia in 1996, it spent $2.2 million and revenues fell $130,000 short.
In Texas in 1995, $1.52 million was spent and revenues exceeded that by about $200,000.
In Boston, more than $3 million will be spent on the All-Star Game and events.
''You wouldn't say that it is really money lost,'' Cancro said. ''It's more just a part of the cost of doing business.''
Some of the revenue produced goes to charity. The Home Run Derby is expected to raise about $700,000 that will be spent developing a baseball diamond in Roxbury named for Jim Rice.
Meanwhile, experts say the All-Star activities are enormously valuable as part of the overall corporate sponsorship of the game. The John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co. and Fleet Financial Group contribute anywhere from $250,000 to $450,000, either as a separate deal for the All-Star Game or as a part of their overall sponsorship of the game, according to Lance Helgeson, senior editor of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a Chicago-based newsletter.
Hancock is believed to be paying $800,000 to $1 million for the FanFest alone.
''Most of the Major League sponsors actually do go for the All-Star Game because it's really one of the biggest values that Major League Baseball delivers,'' Helgeson said.
But, for baseball purists, is it all a bit too much?
Donald Honig, who lives in Connecticut, wrote about 40 baseball books before returning to his first love, writing fiction. He has had enough of the All-Star Game.
''It becomes an entertainment spectacle, with all of the hoopla that proceeds it and then during the game,'' Honig said. ''I don't watch it anymore. It's no longer baseball, it's an entertainment show, and it doesn't interest me.''
Others are less critical.
In 1933, one of the motivations for establishing the game was that Major League Baseball was suffering financially during the Depression. Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis had slashed major league rosters and cut his own pay by 50 percent. The All-Star Game was a way of promoting the sport, just as it is now.
Then, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, two All-Star Games were played, in part, to raise money for the players' pension fund.
''I'm a baseball fanatic,'' says Patrick B. Moscaritolo, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau, who helped to bring the All-Star Game to Boston this year. ''I played organized ball with Tony and Billy Conigliaro when I was a kid in East Boston. But, look, even back in 1933, this was about baseball, but it also was about business.''
