Robinson broke another barrier in 1949

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Today: The 1949 All-Star Game at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field is memorable because it was the first to involve African-American players, including Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's color barrier two years earlier.

Baseball's All-Star Game was instituted in 1933, but it wasn't until 16 years later that the "all" part of the name became authentic.

In 1949, two years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier for the Dodgers, he did the same in the midsummer classic, which fittingly was played at Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.

This time, however, Robinson wasn't the solitary pioneering figure. He was joined by African-American teammates Don Newcombe and Roy Campanella of the Dodgers on the National League squad, while the American League squad featured Cleveland's Larry Doby, who had debuted with the Indians three months after Robinson in 1947.

"The 1949 All-Star Game was a huge step because it proved to baseball and all the naysayers that we were in fact here to stay," Newcombe said in a 1999 USA Today interview marking the 50th anniversary of the game. "By us being chosen to play in that game, it affirmed that African-American players were stars and would continue to be stars and there was nothing anybody could do to stop it."

Robinson started at second base for the National League, while the other three were reserves - Newcombe getting saddled with the defeat in relief of starter Warren Spahn as the American League took an 11-7 victory.

Most of the pregame focus was not on the latest advance of racial integration, but rather the decision of AL Manager Lou Boudreau to start Joe DiMaggio in center field. DiMaggio, recovering from an injury, had just begun playing regularly two weeks earlier, and his inclusion into the lineup knocked fan voting choice Tommy Henrich of the Yankees onto the bench.

The decision was vindicated when DiMaggio had a single, double and three runs batted in during a game that featured a combined 25 hits, the record for an All-Star Game until in 1954.

Part of the reason for the offensive explosion, no doubt, was that both starting pitchers, Spahn of the Boston Braves and Mel Parnell of the Boston Red Sox, had participated in an exhibition game between the two teams the day before at Fenway Park. (The Dodgers, Yankees and Giants had staged a series of round-robin games for New York City bragging rights the same night at Yankee Stadium.)

Just four batters into the first inning, with Spahn struggling, NL Manager Billy Southworth had Newcombe warming up in the bullpen. Newcombe hadn't been called to the majors until May 17 of that year but immediately established himself as a premier pitcher, putting together an 8-1 first-half record.

Newcombe entered the game in the second inning and worked out of a jam by getting out DiMaggio and the Philadelphia A's Eddie Joost. But in the fourth inning, with the NL leading 5-4, things changed.

"Joost hit this little squibbler off me," Newcombe recalled, "right off the end of his bat, to Gil Hodges at first, and then the ball took a crazy hop just as it got to Hodges and it got by him."

That allowed two runs to score, putting the AL ahead to stay and giving the loss to Newcombe. But who knows what would have happened if Newcombe's bid for a bases-loaded, extra-base-hit in the second had not been foiled by Ted Williams, who made a brilliant running catch at the wall.

Robinson had a double in the first inning, the first hit by a black player in All-Star history, and scored three runs. Doby and Campanella went hitless, but their symbolic contribution was huge.

"It was the first time that being named an All-Star was based on your ability to play baseball and not the color of your skin," Doby told USA Today. "With it coming just two years after Mr. Robinson joined the Dodgers, we saw it as a good thing and something to be proud about, that real progress was being made."

Especially in the National League, which was far more aggressive in signing top black players and, not coincidentally, won 19 of 20 All-Star Games from 1963-82.