Never before offered by Lelands nor seen by many veteran dealers and collectors are two 1946 Red Sox Post-Season All-Star programs sold at Fenway Park during the team’s three-game All-Star competition preparing the Red Sox for their 1946 World Series appearance. In 1946, the Red Sox steamrolled their American League competition compiling a 104-50 regular season record finishing 12 games ahead of the second place Detroit Tigers. The National League pennant race was just the opposite from the Red Sox as the Brooklyn Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals finished the season with identical records forcing a three-game playoff series, pushing the World Series back several days. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey, General Manager Eddie Collins, and Manager Joe Cronin met on September 29, 1946, to discuss how the layoff would affect the Red Sox while the Dodgers and Cardinals played their three-game series to decide the National League pennant winner. The Red Sox brass agreed the Red Sox needed to play games to stay baseball sharp while the Dodgers and Cardinals played their three-game series. Yawkey requested permission from American League President Will Harridge to stage a three-game All-Star series to be played at Fenway Park and coincide with the Dodgers and Cardinals series. Yawkey received permission and offered players from around the league the gate receipts from the three games as payment to form an All-Star team to battle his American League champs. Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio, Hank Greenberg, Hal Newhouser, Luke Appling, and many other All-Stars agreed to Yawkey’s offer and the three-game series was scheduled. The gate receipt payments for the three games were slim for the All-Stars as a cold front hit the Boston area and only 1,996 fans attended the first game with roughly the same numbers for the last two contests. The Red Sox won the first game 2-0, but it was a Pyrrhic victory as Ted Williams was hit on the elbow by a Mickey Haefner pitch in the fifth inning. Williams was done for the remainder of the All-Star game series and struggled in the World Series posting a .200 batting average with no home runs. Williams’s injury ended post-season All-Star games throughout baseball as owners didn’t want to risk their star players before playing in the Fall Classics. Joe DiMaggio made news during the first game of the All-Star series as his Yankee uniform wasn’t delivered to Fenway Park on-time and the Yankee Clipper had to wear a Red Sox road uniform while playing the game. It marked the only time during DiMaggio’s Yankee career that he played a game while wearing a uniform that didn’t carry the Yankee name and instead displayed the word Boston - the Yankees’ top rivals. The All-Stars went on to win the second game of the series 4-2 while the Red Sox won the series with a 4-1 victory in Game 3. The two All-Star programs offered are from Games 1 and 3. The original owners of the programs listed the scores of the games on the covers of the two programs and noted that Ted Williams was injured on the cover of the Game 1 program. The Game 1 program is in NM condition with a strong binding and no rips or tears. The program from Game 3 has some spine splitting along the bottom half of the program but is still intact with the stapled binding holding the program together. The scoring pages list the Red Sox and All-Star lineups. One program is scored. Considering approximately only 2,000 fans attended each All-Star game, these two programs are truly rare specimens of Red Sox history and Joe DiMaggio lore as the great Yankee Hall of Famer wore a Red Sox uniform during Game 1. These two Red Sox All-Star programs could easily be the centerpiece of any Red Sox, Joe DiMaggio, or publication collection.