Sox CEO says club is still pushing to bring All-Star Game back to Fenway Park

Jul. 13—Next Tuesday the MLB All-Star Game will return to Dodger Stadium for the first time since 1980.

Could Fenway Park follow soon after?

It's now been 23 years since Fenway Park hosted the 1999 All-Star Game, one of the city's great sports spectacles famous for Pedro Martinez's dominance, the epic Home Run Derby and for Ted Williams' memorable appearance during the pregame festivities. Since then more than two thirds of the league's clubs have hosted the All-Star Game, and prior to the season Red Sox CEO Sam Kennedy told reporters the club is working to bring the game back to Boston.

Reached this past weekend, Kennedy confirmed those efforts are still ongoing.

"While there is nothing imminent, we continue to have interest in hosting an All-Star Game at Fenway Park and are having ongoing discussions with MLB about the possibility," Kennedy said.

After Dodger Stadium this season there are two more All-Star venues confirmed in the coming years. Seattle's T-Mobile Park will host in 2023 and Philadelphia's Citizens Bank Park will host in 2026 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

As of now no announcement has been made for who might host in 2024 or 2025, but the Red Sox appear to be fighting hard to land the game one of those years.

The All-Star Game returning to Boston would make sense on a number of levels. For one, the park has completely transformed since 1999. Back then there were no Green Monster seats, no right field roof deck and no Truly Terrace, and over the past two decades the current ownership group has invested millions of dollars into park improvements that the All-Star Game could showcase.

The area surrounding the park has also seen substantial development, and Boston has always been one of the country's biggest baseball cities.

The timing might also be right given that MLB is nearing the tail end of a building boom that has seen the majority of the league's clubs open new stadiums since the 1990s. The league often uses the All-Star Game to showcase its new venues, so it's no surprise that 14 of the last 21 games since Fenway were played at brand new stadiums either within five years of the venue's opening or at "older" sites that still opened after 2000.

Some newer parks have now hosted more than once. Cleveland's Progressive Field and Colorado's Coors Field have both hosted two All-Star Games in the last 25 years, and next year Seattle's T-Mobile Park will host its second since Fenway's last game, with the first coming in 2001.

Ironically, T-Mobile Park officially opened on July 15, 1999, two days after the last All-Star Game at Fenway Park was played.

As of now there are three new parks that haven't and aren't currently scheduled to host the All-Star Game. The new Yankee Stadium, Texas' Globe Life Park and Atlanta's Truist Park, which was meant to host in 2021 before the game was moved to Colorado in response to controversial new voting laws passed in Georgia.

Globe Life Park and the Texas Rangers are a virtual lock to host the All-Star Game at some point in the coming years, but MLB may be hesitant to return to Atlanta so soon after last year's controversy, and the New York Yankees hosted the All-Star Game relatively recently in the old Yankee Stadium's final year in 2008.

That might present an opening for Fenway Park, but the Red Sox aren't the only contenders.

There are six clubs that haven't hosted an All-Star Game since 1999, those being the Rangers, Baltimore Orioles, Chicago Cubs, Toronto Blue Jays, Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays. Oakland and Tampa Bay are obviously non-factors with their respective stadium situations, but the other four all have compelling cases of their own.

Texas has the new ballpark. Baltimore's Camden Yards remains one of the sport's crown jewels even 30 years after its opening. Toronto could pitch a future return to the Rogers Centre as an opportunity to welcome the baseball community back to Canada once that country's pandemic restrictions eventually ease. The Cubs could make a similar case for Wrigley Field as the Red Sox with Fenway, only they haven't hosted since 1990.

Needless to say it won't be a slam dunk, but the Red Sox have done a remarkable job ensuring Fenway Park remains a vibrant baseball venue for decades to come. What better way to reward that investment by bringing back the All-Star Game?

Email: mcerullo@northofboston.com. Twitter: @MacCerullo.