Some additional events and festivities associated with the game take place each year close to and during this break in the regular season.

The most recent All-Star Game was held on July 16, 2024, at Globe Life Field in Arlington, home of the AL's Texas Rangers.

This practice ended after the owners agreed to give the players a larger share of the income from a single game.

[5] According to the Baseball Database provided by Sean Lahman, a total of 2,010 individual players have been selected for an All-Star game between 1933 and 2024.

For the first All-Star Game, intended as a one-time event, Connie Mack and John McGraw were regarded as baseball's venerable managers, and were asked to lead the American and National League teams, respectively.

In 1979, Bob Lemon managed the American League team after having been fired by New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

The Philadelphia Phillies and Cincinnati Reds had finished in a second-place tie in the NL; the Chicago White Sox had finished second in the AL. Cincinnati's manager, Fred Hutchinson, had died in the off-season, so Gene Mauch of the Phillies and Al López of the White Sox were chosen to be the managers for the 1965 All-Star Game.

One continuing controversy of the player selection process is the rule that each team has to have at least one representative on its league's All-Star roster.

[10] On April 29, 2010, MLB announced several rules changes for future All-Star games, effective with the 2010 edition.

For the workout, batting practice and Home Run Derby contest, players started using one type of cap with colors corresponding the league.

As part of the rise of the MLB Promotion Corporation's attempts to modernize marketing of baseball, fan balloting for the starting eight was restored for the 1970 game.

Sometime in the 1960s, the distinction between left-fielder, center-fielder, and right-fielder was dropped, and it was provided that the top three vote-getters in the outfield category would start regardless of position.

This was particularly evident in 2002, when National League manager Bob Brenly selected his own catcher, Damian Miller, over the more deserving Paul Lo Duca; while American League manager Joe Torre selected his own third baseman, Robin Ventura, over the Oakland Athletics' Gold Glove and Silver Slugger-winning third baseman Eric Chavez.

The following year, MLB announced that an extra position player would be added to each roster for the 2010 game and beyond, bringing the total to 34 for each league.

[11] One continuing controversy of the player selection process is the rule that each team has to have at least one representative on its league's All-Star roster.

[21] In 1957, Cincinnati Reds fans stuffed the ballot box and elected seven Reds players to start in the All-Star Game: Johnny Temple (2B), Roy McMillan (SS), Don Hoak (3B), Ed Bailey (C), Frank Robinson (LF), Gus Bell (CF), and Wally Post (RF), and the only non-Red elected to start for the National League was St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Stan Musial.

Commissioner Ford Frick appointed Willie Mays of the New York Giants and Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves to substitute for Reds players Gus Bell and Wally Post, and took fan voting rights away in future games; Bell was kept as a reserve, while Post was injured and would have been unable to play in any event.

The 1988 Game was surrounded by tacit accusations against Oakland Athletics fans of stuffing the ballot box in favor of catcher Terry Steinbach, whose qualifications as a starter were questioned by some sportswriters.

[22][23][24] Steinbach wound up being named the game's Most Valuable Player, hitting a home run and a sacrifice fly to get both RBIs in a 2–1 win.

In 1999, Chris Nandor, a Red Sox fan, utilized a simple computer program to vote for Nomar Garciaparra over 39,000 times.

[26] In 2015, Kansas City Royals fans were accused of stuffing the ballot box when eight of their players (Salvador Pérez, Lorenzo Cain, Mike Moustakas, Alcides Escobar, Eric Hosmer, Kendrys Morales, Alex Gordon, and Omar Infante) were leading the ballots at their respective positions before the final tally was taken.

The only other Royals to make the final lineup were Mike Moustakas, Kelvin Herrera and Wade Davis; Moustakas as the winner of the AL All-Star Final Vote while Herrera and Davis, both pitchers, were chosen through either Player Ballots or by Royals and AL Manager, Ned Yost.

The 2002 All-Star Game, held in Milwaukee, ended in controversy in the 11th inning when both teams ran out of substitute players available to pitch in relief.

[35][36] Some writers especially questioned the integrity of this rule after the 2014 All-Star Game, when St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Adam Wainwright suggested that he intentionally gave Derek Jeter some easy pitches to hit in the New York Yankees' shortstop's final All-Star appearance before he retired at the end of that season.

Since 2022, any All-Star game ending in a tie after 9 regulation innings will result in teams battling in a best-of-three-round home run derby.

In 1945, severe wartime travel restrictions in effect led to the game scheduled to be played at Boston's Fenway Park being deferred to the next season.

[41] In 1981, the game was moved from July to August, after the middle portion of the 1981 season, including the scheduled All-Star break, had been erased by the MLB players' strike.

The 2021 All-Star Game was held in Denver, home of the NL's Colorado Rockies, as MLB moved the 2021 game from Atlanta in response to a recently-passed Georgia election law, stating "Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box.

[46] The HBCU Swingman Classic, open to players from 17 historically black colleges and universities in the United States, was introduced in 2023 as part of an MLB-MLBPA Youth Development Foundation initiative.

Former Atlanta Braves Vice President Dick Cecil had the initial idea, presented a successful 15-minute pitch to Cracker Jack CEO Frank Forrestal of how this would be their chance to re-associate the brand with baseball, and enlisted the Association of Professional Baseball Players of America (APBPA) to help bring in retired players to participate.