Major League Baseball’s all-stars now head for the Bronx and the doomed Yankee Stadium, condemned to the wrecking ball for being insufficiently profitable and insufficiently youthful.

But some of us still remember the only All-Star Game played at Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium, when the old ballpark on 33rd Street was still young. It was precisely half-a-century ago — July 8, 1958.

How many still remember? It was the summer a kid named Brooks Robinson planted himself at third base and stayed there for the next two decades. Tommy D’Alesandro was gearing up to run for a fourth campaign at City Hall.

And people were listening to a new kind of music on the radio, called rock ‘n’ roll, that let loose a generation of disc jockeys here with names like Paul “Fat Daddy” Johnson and long, lean, lanky Larry Dean, and Johnny Dark and Buddy Deane (and a generation of parents whose voices could be heard through open windows on hot summer nights before air-conditioning took over, bellowing, “Turn down that radio”).

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It was the summer Paul Richards broke out the giant catcher’s mitt and knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm no-hit the champion Yankees. Silky Sullivan flopped at the Preakness before 35,000 racing fans. When people went to first-run movies, they drove downtown to the Mayfair and the Century and the Hippodrome and saw “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “No Time for Sergeants” and “Gigi.”

The Orioles’ all-stars were pitcher Billy O’Dell and catcher Gus Triandos. O’Dell, retiring nine straight over the last three innings, was named the game’s top player. Triandos singled his first time up, setting off a roar of approval. When he came up in the sixth inning, manager Casey Stengel pulled him and sent up Yogi Berra to pinch-hit.

How furious were Orioles’ fans? This furious: “Baltimore fans,” wrote a Boston columnist named Harold Kaese, “put Casey Stengel in the same class with Hitler, Rasputin and Benedict Arnold.”

It was the summer the Orioles rewarded their best hitter, first baseman Bob “Frozen Rope” Boyd, with a new contract. Boyd hit .318 the year before. So they raised his salary to $12,000. It sounded like pretty decent money. It was also the summer the Orioles signed a bonus baby outfielder named Dave Nicholson.

In the News-Post, sports editor John Steadman wrote, “Young Dave will never have to carry a lunch bucket, punch a time clock or work for a living. He has it made. Nicholson became independently wealthy … when the Baltimore Orioles handed over a contract that is the greatest gamble in Baltimore sports history.” The contract was for $80,000. And the money would be paid out over three years.

The city had three daily newspapers back then, and each one’s sports pages were examined closely. They were the only game in town. There was no ESPN, there were no sports talk shows on the radio. TV news was still so young that channel 13 had the 7:23 news each evening, with Keith McBee. Seven minutes to wrap up all the news and sports of the day.

In the News-Post, Steadman, attempting to be kind, called the All-Star Game “the city’s greatest sports spectacular, surpassing Army-Navy games of 1924 and 1944, and the War Admiral-Seabiscuit race of 1938. For color, ballyhoo, fanfare, pageantry, pomp and ceremony, the All-Star show was an overwhelming success.”

Then he got to the unfortunate truth of it. “The performance on the field was far less exciting as not one play occurred which brought the crowd to its feet or sent the spectators away on an enthusiastic note.”

Nobody hit the baseball with authority. Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were there, and Hank Aaron and Stan Musial, and Ted Williams and South Baltimore’s Al Kaline. The American League had nine hits and the Nationals had four. Every one of them was a single.

The American League won, 4-3, thanks to O’Dell’s relief pitching. But there was a restlessness in the stands, even then. They still called baseball the national pastime (and Vice President Richard Nixon threw out the first ball).

But the grand old game was beginning to seem slow: not just the All-Star contest, but baseball itself. The country was moving to quicker rhythms, musical and otherwise, and turning increasingly to new diversions.

The tip-off came that summer. The All-Star crowd was 48,829. But just four weeks later, the Baltimore Colts staged their annual intrasquad game at the same Memorial Stadium. It was a glorified but essentially meaningless scrimmage. And the crowd was 48,309.