Two state senators push to host All-Star Game
CHICAGO — A pair of Pennsylvania state senators stepped up to the plate Friday and began lobbying Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred to shift the 2021 MLB All-Star Game to PNC Park.
In a letter to Mr. Manfred, Allegheny County Sports Commission Chairman Jay Costa and Wayne Fontana, who’s the chairman of the Sports and Exhibition Authority, made the case that Pittsburgh should host the July 13 game, which was pulled from Atlanta’s Truist Park over Georgia’s controversial voting changes.
“As you’ll recall, we recently hosted the 2006 game successfully (as well as on four other occasions) and we are ready and willing to do it again,” the two Democratswrote. “Pittsburgh’s PNC Park is annually ranked among the best baseball stadiums in the country. The vistas of Downtownare unrivaled, and the intimacy of this stadium draws fans into the experience. There could not be a better venue to host the 2021 MLB All-Star Game.”
Mr. Costa and Mr. Fontana touted the city’s capacity “to host the international audience that the All-Star Game attracts,” a nod to the Future Stars Game and the Home Run Derby.
Both precede the game itself. This year, the MLB All-Star Game was also supposed to include the draft for the first time.
Mr. Manfred did say that MLB will continue to honor the late Hank Aaron during All-Star Game festivities.
Pittsburgh has hosted the All-Star Game five times: at Forbes Field in 1944 and 1959, at Three Rivers Stadium in 1974 and 1994, and at PNC Park in 2006.
According to BaseballAlmanac, the economic impact of that event on Pittsburgh was $52.3 million. Cleveland hosted the last All-Star Game in front of fans in 2019 and reportedly generated $65 million for that city.
As much as Mr. Costa and Mr. Fontana might want the game here, the Pirates have not had any discussions with MLB about actually hosting the game, a source confirmed on Friday.
The middle part of what Mr. Costa and Mr. Fontana wrote made an interesting appeal — to Pittsburgh as the playing home of Roberto Clemente, as well as Negro Leagues legend Josh Gibson. There’s a push to have the MVP Awards renamed after the slugging catcher, and this could be an interesting time to shift something to Gibson’s home turf.
Gibson played for both the Grays and Crawfords, and Pittsburgh has a rich history of Negro Leagues baseball. In December, MLB made the long-overdue decision to count Negro Leagues statistics the same as all the others throughout its history.
The senators’ letter finished by citing Pennsylvania’s voting policies, saying that “Pennsylvania boasts unfettered access for our citizens to the ballot box.”
“In 2019, we passed a major expansion of voting access, Act 77, permitting no-excuse mail-in ballots,” they wrote. “We offer online voter registration, 13 hours of open polls, and our state’s Supreme Court has struck down efforts to impose onerous and discriminatory Voter ID requirements.”