Sport-Blog.com

Written by James Fohl

With the Major League baseball season well under way, and since it is almost half way completed, baseball fans of all sizes are getting readily excited for the upcoming 2005 Major League Baseball All Star Game, which is scheduled to be held on Tuesday, July 12th, 2005 in the Detroit Tiger's Comerica Park. The Major League Baseball All Star Game is of course a baseball game composed of two teams, one from the American League, and another from the National League that play each other in hopes of showing off which league has the most talent. These two teams are composed of the best players of each league, thus the whole All Star title of the game is put in to perspective.

For years and years since its introduction in 1933, the All Star game was just that, a single baseball game played in the middle of the Major League Baseball season. However, for a couple seasons, most notably from 1959 up to and including 1962, two games were played a season.

For some fans, just a game between the best players of the two leagues just wasn't enough. The fans wanted to see more, such as competitions held between individual players, and thus the home run derby contest came to be in the mid 1980s.

First played during the 1985 All Star game, the home run derby was a contest that pitted the best eight batters of both the National and American Leagues against each other in a contest to see who could hit the most home runs.

Each player is given ten outs, which refers to a ball that is either not hit out of the park, or a ball that the batter swings at and misses. Home runs, and pitches that the batter does not swing at do not count as outs.

While the home run derby contest started out with batters only slugging five to maybe ten home runs during the contest, in recent home run derby contests batters hitting twenty or more home runs during the contest are not rare.

So far, in its twenty year history the record for most home runs hit during a home run derby contest stands at twenty seven, and the record was set by Miguel Tejada of the Baltimore Orioles in the 2004 season. The record for the batter to hit the least home runs, yet still win the home run derby contest is a tie, and goes to Ryne Sandberg of the Chicago Cubs in 1990, and Eric Davis of the Cincinnati Reds in 1989. Both Ryne Sandberg and Eric Davis only managed
to hit three home runs during the home run derby contest and still come out winners.

While the home run derby contest remains fairly popular, it still acts as a side show to the main attraction of the All Star game, which of course is the All Star game itself. It will really be exciting to see what happens, and what records are broken during this year's Major League Baseball All Star game.