If Tuesday’s All-Star Game is tied after nine innings, there are no extra innings. Instead, baseball deploys the most entertaining tiebreaker in American sports: a home run swing-off — three hitters per side, three swings each, most homers wins the game. It sounds like something invented on a playground, it was written into the actual CBA in 2022, and in 2025 it finally happened: the first swing-off in All-Star history, decided by a Kyle Schwarber performance for the ages.
Here’s exactly how the rule works, the night it debuted, and the 2002 disaster that explains why it exists at all.
The chart below covers the rule, the historic first swing-off, and the tie that changed everything. Take a look, then we’ll break it all down.
From Selig’s Shrug to Schwarber’s Swings
The swing-off is the final chapter of a 24-year saga that began with the most embarrassing night in All-Star history: Milwaukee, 2002, tied 7-7 after eleven innings with both managers literally out of pitchers, when Commissioner Bud Selig — standing in his own home ballpark — threw up his hands and declared a tie while 41,000 fans chanted “refund.” Baseball’s response was the most notorious overcorrection in exhibition-sport history, “This Time It Counts,” which spent fourteen seasons letting a July exhibition decide World Series home-field advantage, a stake everyone hated until it was quietly repealed in 2017 — which returned the game to pure exhibition but left the original problem unsolved: what happens when it’s tied and the arms are gone? The 2022 CBA finally produced the elegant answer, borrowing from soccer’s shootout logic but swapping in the one skill an All-Star roster has in infinite supply. Then it sat dormant for three years as a novelty clause — until Atlanta 2025, when a blown NL lead produced a 6-6 tie after nine, the dugouts emptied onto the top step, and Kyle Schwarber delivered one of the great cameo performances in the sport’s history: three swings, three home runs, a perfect swing-off, the NL win, and an All-Star MVP earned in roughly ninety seconds — a cameo he followed with a 56-homer season, in case anyone thought it was a fluke. The players celebrated like it was the postseason, and a rule written as an insurance policy became the best argument the All-Star Game has made for itself in decades.
Final Word
What happens if the All-Star Game ends in a tie: no extra innings — a home run swing-off, three pre-selected hitters per league, three swings each off a coach’s pitching, most homers wins, sudden death if needed, a rule born in the 2022 CBA as the long-delayed answer to the 2002 Milwaukee tie and the “This Time It Counts” era it spawned. It debuted in 2025 with Kyle Schwarber’s perfect 3-for-3 MVP masterpiece — and this year’s game is in Schwarber’s home park in Philadelphia on Tuesday, one night after he swings in the Derby. If it happens again, the update lands here within minutes.
The week’s other swing-based spectacle is covered in the Home Run Derby rules, explained, the money on Monday’s line is in Derby prize money, and the rosters swinging all week are in the 2026 Derby field tracker.