Background
As with each All-Star Game since 1970, the eight starting position players of each league, as well as the American League's designated hitter, were elected by fan balloting. The remaining players were selected by a players' vote, each league's team manager, and a second fan balloting to add one more player to each roster. In all, 32 players were selected to each league's team, not including players who decline to play due to injuries or personal reasons.
The game was the sixth straight All-Star Game to decide home-field advantage in the World Series, the AL having clinched each of the first five opportunities. The AL entered the game on an 11-game unbeaten streak (10–0–1) as the NL continued to look for their first win since the 1996 game in Philadelphia, still holding a 40–37–2 lead in the series.
Read more about this topic: 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star Game
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“... every experience in life enriches one’s background and should teach valuable lessons.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn’t know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)