RetroSimba

In the early days of baseball on television, Cardinals owner Fred Saigh was one of the first to go dialing for dollars.

In November 1952, Saigh tried to get a form of revenue sharing started among National League franchises regarding broadcast rights fees.

To Saigh, baseball’s television audience was an extension of the ballpark audience, and he wanted a split of the television money that home teams were getting for broadcasting Cardinals road games.

If Saigh was denied a share of those television revenues, he threatened to unplug the broadcasts.

On the air

The first televised major-league game was Aug. 26, 1939, when New York’s NBC station aired the Reds versus the Dodgers from Brooklyn, but it wasn’t until after World War II ended that TV sets became widely available and more affordable to mass markets.

The first television station in St. Louis, and the 13th in the United States, was KSD-TV, Channel 5. A NBC affiliate, the station was owned by Pulitzer Publishing, also the owners of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Pulitzer became the first to own both a newspaper and a television station.

(In 1979, when Pulitzer sold the station, its call letters were changed to KSDK.)

KSD-TV began broadcasting on Feb. 8, 1947, with a 90-minute local information afternoon program. In one of the program’s segments that day, Post-Dispatch sports editor J. Roy Stockton interviewed Cardinals catcher and future broadcaster Joe Garagiola.

The KSD-TV studio was located with the Post-Dispatch building on Olive Street in St. Louis. According to the station, the newspaper’s press operators also handled the studio lights. Sometimes, when needed to put out the latest edition of the afternoon paper, they’d leave the studio, delaying the start of a local program.

Show time

KSD-TV management recognized immediately the potential audience and advertising value of baseball programming, and entered into agreements with the Browns of the American League and the Cardinals of the National League to televise some of their games.

The first televised games in St. Louis were KSD-TV broadcasts of two Browns versus Cardinals exhibitions at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis on April 12-13, 1947, just before the start of the regular season.

KSD-TV also broadcast the Browns’ season opener against the Tigers on April 15 in St. Louis, and the Cardinals’ home opener against the Cubs on April 18.

From then on, Browns and Cardinals games in 1947 were a programming staple on KSD-TV.

Rights and wrongs

Sam Breadon, who made the deal with KSD-TV for the Cardinals, sold the club to Robert Hannegan and Fred Saigh in November 1947. Hannegan died in 1949, leaving Saigh as majority owner.

Saigh had no options in negotiating a local TV deal for the Cardinals. By 1952, St. Louis had 372,000 TV sets but still only one television station, KSD-TV. According to The Sporting News, the franchises reaping the most in broadcast rights fees then were all in New York _ the Yankees ($500,000), Giants ($375,000) and Dodgers ($300,000).

Baseball had no unified television policy then. “Each team signs private agreements with the others, giving the home club permission to televise the games,” Saigh explained to The Sporting News.

In the summer of 1952, a Cardinals versus Giants series became a flashpoint for a broadcasting battle.

“We signed an agreement permitting the Giants to televise our games at the Polo Grounds in New York,” Saigh told The Sporting News, “but were turned down by the Giants when we asked to televise our games in New York back to St. Louis. Our reaction was to prohibit the Giants from televising our two remaining games in New York. The Giants said they would televise anyway. So we threatened to keep our team off the field. The commissioner (Ford Frick) stepped in and warned us that these games would be forfeited if our team failed to take the field.”

Saigh stewed about what he viewed as bullying by the Giants to control broadcast revenue, and was determined to fight back.

Show me the money

In November 1952, Saigh said he would seek compensation from the Giants for the two home games they televised without the Cardinals’ permission.

Saigh also said he would refuse to allow any team to televise a Cardinals road game in 1953 unless the home club agreed to share its broadcast revenue with the Cardinals. At that time, a home club received all revenue from its telecasts.

“Saigh proposed to the National League that television and radio revenues be regarded as part of the gate receipts and that visiting clubs be cut in on these funds as they had been on the box-office takes,” The Sporting News reported.

Predictably, most team owners called Saigh’s idea “socialism,” The Sporting News noted.

One exception was maverick Browns owner Bill Veeck, who usually was in conflict with Saigh in competing for a chunk of the St. Louis baseball market. Veeck supported Saigh’s suggestion that visiting teams share in the broadcast revenue. “It is odd to find Veeck and Saigh on the same side of any campaign, but they are fighting for a split of the TV and radio money,” The Sporting News reported.

Saigh suggested a visiting team get 30 percent of a home team’s broadcast revenue, or 50 percent when the home team was the Giants or Dodgers.

Meet the new boss

Saigh succeeded in changing some minds. The Cubs and Reds agreed to share broadcast revenues with the Cardinals. The Phillies were close to joining in, too, the Associated Press reported.

Owners of the Giants and Dodgers “were aghast” and showed “no intention of backing down on their determination not to pay Saigh a dime for permitting the telecasts of Cardinals games at their parks,” The Sporting News reported.

Saigh had a bigger problem than broadcast revenue rights. On Jan. 28, 1953, he was sentenced to 15 months in prison and fined $15,000 for federal income tax evasion. Unable to keep the team, he apparently considered an offer from buyers who wanted to move the franchise to Milwaukee, but sold the Cardinals to St. Louis brewery Anheuser-Busch, which was run by Gussie Busch

Eager to ingratiate himself into the old boys network of club owners, Busch reversed the revenue sharing stance of Saigh. Busch said he would not demand a share of TV revenue for any Cardinals road game televised by a home club. “Anything we can do to bring the game to more and more people, we hope to be able to do,” Busch told The Sporting News.

Busch had a business reason for his decision. He viewed televised baseball games as an outlet for pitching Anheuser-Busch products to a broad audience. “Under the new ownership, Cardinals television will become a vital asset,” Dan Daniel wrote in the New York World-Telegram and Sun.

Learning to share

In 1966, Major League Baseball sold its first national television package, netting $300,000 per team.

Soon after the players’ strike in 1994, the capitalists who own Major League Baseball and its franchises entered into a comprehensive revenue sharing arrangement. It eventually included the evenly split sharing of revenue from sources such as broadcasts, merchandising and Internet.

Baseball socialism wasn’t so bad, management discovered. In 2022, each team got $110 million from revenue sharing.

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Harry Caray built a broadcast career in St. Louis based on baseball and beer, but his relationship with the Anheuser-Busch brewery became as flat as a cup of Budweiser left outside in the summer sun.

On Oct. 9, 1969, Caray, the voice of the Cardinals for 25 years, was fired by the sponsor of the broadcasts, Anheuser-Busch.

Caray said he wasn’t told why he was fired.

Cardinals owner Gussie Busch, president of Anheuser-Busch, said the brewery’s marketing department recommended Caray’s dismissal.

In his 1989 book, “Holy Cow,” Caray scoffed at widespread speculation his departure came because he was having an affair with the wife of an Anheuser-Busch executive.

“At first, these rumors annoyed me,” Caray said. “Then they began to amuse me. They actually made me feel kind of good. I mean, let’s face it … I wore glasses as thick as the bottom of Bud bottles, and as much as I hate to say it, I was never confused with Robert Redford.”

Wild about Harry

In 1945, Caray, a St. Louis native, began broadcasting Cardinals games on radio station WIL. Griesedieck Brothers Brewery was the sponsor. Caray and former Cardinals manager Gabby Street formed the broadcast team.

Cardinals games also were broadcast on two other radio stations then. Johnny O’Hara and former Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean called the games on KWK. On KMOX, the broadcast team was France Laux and Ray Schmidt.

Caray’s colorful broadcasting style made him popular. In 1947, the Cardinals chose Griesedieck Brothers Brewery as the exclusive broadcast sponsor and Caray’s career soared.

In his book “That’s a Winner,” Cardinals broadcaster Jack Buck said, “In the Midwest, no announcer has been more revered or respected than Harry. He told it like he thought it was, and that’s different from telling it like it is. He never hesitated to give his opinion … He had the guts to do it. That was his style.”

In February 1953, Anheuser-Busch purchased the Cardinals and took over sponsorship of the broadcasts. Caray went from pitching Griesedieck Brothers beer to advertising Anheuser-Busch products.

Anheuser-Busch sales increased, and Caray and Gussie Busch became pals.

“Harry and Gussie Busch were close friends,” said Buck. “They used to drink and play cards at Busch’s home at Grant’s Farm.”

Said Caray: “Gussie and I rarely talked about baseball. Ours was not a business relationship. It was social.”

When Caray was struck by a car and severely injured in November 1968, Busch gave him use of a Florida beach house to recuperate during the winter. Caray made a triumphant return to the broadcast booth in the Cardinals’ 1969 opener.

Trouble brewing

A few months into the season, speculation about Caray’s job status became a hot topic in St. Louis. In August 1969, Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he was offered a five-year contract for “excellent money” to join KMOX.

Prince decided to stay with the Pirates’ broadcast team, but Caray was worried. Gossip about Caray’s alleged womanizing was rampant, so he met with Gussie Busch to talk about it. In his book, Caray said Busch laughed and told him, “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

In September 1969, before he went on a trip to Europe, Busch told Caray “to keep his mouth shut” about his concerns until Busch returned, Buck said.

On Sept. 20, 1969, the Cardinals, whose hopes of qualifying for the postseason were fading, played the Cubs in Chicago when a journalist informed Caray of a report saying he would be fired. During the game broadcast, Caray told his audience, “The Cardinals are about to be eliminated and apparently so am I.”

According to Buck, Busch was livid with Caray for making the remark and for disobeying his edict to stay mum.

The ax falls

On Oct. 2, 1969, before the Cardinals played their season finale at St. Louis, Caray said he approached Buck, his broadcast partner since 1954, and asked him, “Do you know something I should know?”

Caray said Buck revealed he had been asked by Anheuser-Busch publicist Al Fleishman and KMOX general manager Robert Hyland to recruit other broadcasters. In his book, Caray said he and Fleishman “had been enemies for decades” and Fleishman wanted Caray fired.

A week later, Caray was at the Cinema Bar in downtown St. Louis on a Thursday afternoon when the bartender told him he had a phone call. An Anheuser-Busch advertising executive, who knew Caray’s hangouts, was on the line. The ad man informed Caray, 55, he was fired and Buck would replace him as head of the Cardinals broadcast team.

“I’m bruised, I’m hurt and I feel badly about it,” Caray said to the Post-Dispatch.

Caray also was miffed he didn’t hear about the decision from Gussie Busch. “You’d think after 25 years they would at least call me in and talk to me face to face about this,” said Caray.

Buck said, “I had nothing to do” with the decision to fire Caray.

“I always wanted to be No. 1 on the broadcast team,” Buck told the Post-Dispatch, “but not at the expense of Harry or anyone else.”

Special order

On his way home, Caray stopped at Busch’s Grove restaurant in the suburb of Ladue _ despite its name, the restaurant wasn’t affiliated with Anheuser-Busch _ and “decided to get some revenge,” he said.

Caray ordered a Schlitz, a beer made by an Anheuser-Busch rival. The restaurant didn’t carry the brand, so the bartender went across the street to a liquor store and bought cans of Schlitz.

As news photographers and television cameramen arrived, Caray posed with a can of Schlitz in his hand and “drew applause from a large number of patrons,” the Associated Press reported.

The bartender made several runs to the liquor store to stock up on Schlitz because customers kept ordering the beer in support of Caray, according to the Associated Press.

“I thought it was funny at the time because I was angry and hurt,” Caray said. “It seemed like the right gesture to make, but now I realize it was petty.”

After former players Bill White and Elston Howard each rejected a chance to join Buck in the Cardinals booth, Jim Woods, who did Pirates games with Bob Prince, was hired to be Buck’s broadcast partner.

According to the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Reds were interested in Caray. Their general manager, Bob Howsam, was the Cardinals’ general manager from August 1964 to January 1967. “You know Harry and I are good friends,” Howsam said.

Instead, Caray joined the Athletics broadcast team in 1970. He left after one season, went to the White Sox and capped his career with the Cubs, for whom he hawked Budweiser with the line, “I’m a Cubs fan and a Bud man.” Video

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