’68 All-Star featured twelve Cy Young winners, nineteen Hall of Famers, but zero RBIs

July inevitably brings back memories of the All-Star Games, whether it be heroics on the field or the injustice of players who were snubbed by not being selected. Since almost the beginning of this century, all baseball fans look back on the 2002 contest with a feeling of regret.

Because both coaches (Joe Torre of the New York Yankees and Bob Brenley of the Arizona Diamondbacks) ran out of players to use, the game was called in the eleventh inning with the score tied at seven. Commissioner Bud Selig was especially upset that the game had been played at Miller Park, home of the Milwaukee Brewers team that he once owned.

He immediately set about making sure there was never another Midsummer Classic without a winner, and thankfully, that 2002 game remains the only one that ended in a tie. Exactly thirty years before that, however, a quick look at the box score might lead one to assume that the All-Star Game must have ended in a tie.

Neither team managed to get a RBI in the contest, so in the bottom row of the score box, the zeroes seem to indicate that the game ended in a scoreless tie. There were probably plenty of those in the 1968 regular season, when the pitchers were so dominant that Major League Baseball decided to take the mound down starting the following year.

American League hitters, despite a lineup such as Harmon Killebrew, Mickey Mantle, Brooks Robinson and Carl Yastremski, didn’t record a single. Their offense was limited to three doubles by Tony Oliva of the Minnesota Twins, Don Wert of the Detroit Tigers, and Jim Fregosi of the California Angels, none of whom produced a single run.

When one considers who was on the mound in front of them, the lack of offense seems less surprising. Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal and Tom Seaver were four of the power arms that combined to shut out American League hitters.

Their Senior Circuit opponents proved almost as unproductive offensively, despite the fact that the lineup featured more future Hall of Famers. Willie Mays was in first place, followed by legends like Johnny Bench, Hank Aaron, Ron Santo and Tony Perez.

Even with that cadre of outstanding hitters, National League hitters couldn’t score a single run. With all the blank spaces in that column, it would be easy to assume that neither team scored.

Two spaces to the left in the scorecard, the run column shows the only difference in the two clubs that day. The National League managed to score a run, when Mays crossed the plate as San Francisco Giants teammate Willie McCovey rebounded into a double play off Boston ace Luis Tiant in the bottom of the first.

After that scant run in the opening inning, pitchers for both teams dominated the offenses. That minimal production represented the lowest-scoring game in All Star history but regardless of what the RBI column indicates, it was not a tie.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *