MLB: No more paper ballots

Fans wanting to vote for Major League Baseball's All-Star teams will have to do it online this year.

A March 9 memo said that 80 percent of baseball's All-Star ballots last season were online and more than 16 million paper ballots were unused, Bloomberg Sports reported.

The memo, obtained by Bloomberg and written by MLB president for business and media Bob Bowman, said that "we therefore have made the decision to go green, while also saving the cost of managing an offline program."

An MLB spokesman confirmed the plan to Bloomberg.

MLB fans were first given the opportunity to vote for All-Stars in 1947. That stopped when Cincinnati Reds fans stuffed the ballot box in 1957, but it was reinstated in 1970. The punch cards in stadiums have remained largely unchanged since then.

MLB joins the other major professional sports leagues in the U.S. in going online only.