BY ROBERT DOMINGUEZ / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Updated: Thursday, July 18, 2013, 5:21 PM

It was the all-star game few baseball fans witnessed, and fewer today know it was ever played at all. Fifty years ago, on a warm and sunny autumn afternoon in New York, two teams comprised of Latino players from the Major Leagues squared off at the Polo Grounds for an exhibition game billed as a charity event to benefit a new Latin American Hall of Fame. Held on Oct. 12, 1963 – a week after the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the New York Yankees in the World Series – it would be the last baseball game ever played at the ramshackle Polo Grounds, which had housed the expansion Mets in their first two seasons while Shea Stadium was being built in Queens. It was also the first – and only – time baseball’s Latino players would be squarely in the spotlight, especially in an era when a Spanish surname was still a rarity in the Major Leagues. “It was historic,” says Juan Marichal, the Dominican Republic-born star pitcher for the San Francisco Giants.
“There was a lot of emotion among all the players, and you could tell the fans were excited about it, too.”
Too bad there weren’t all that many in the stands. Unlike the televised, three-day hoopla surrounding next week’s All-Star game at the Mets’ Citi Field, this all-star tilt was played in near anonymity. An official crowd numbering just 14,235 – the Polo Grounds fit 56,000 – saw players from the American League pitted against their counterparts from the National League.