Dodgers president Larry MacPhail, accustomed to rocking the status quo, was the first executive in the major leagues to go to bat for television.
On Aug. 26, 1939, a big-league baseball game was televised for the first time when NBC aired the opener of a doubleheader between the Reds and Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.
MacPhail, an innovator who introduced night games and yellow baseballs to the big leagues, approved the experiment to televise a Dodgers game when the opportunity was presented to him by team broadcaster Red Barber.
Today, television is as much a part of baseball as bats and gloves, but in 1939 the medium barely was part of American culture.
Greatest showman
MacPhail, a lawyer and colleague of Cardinals executive Branch Rickey, worked in the Cardinals’ system as president of their Columbus, Ohio, farm club before getting to the big leagues as general manager of the Reds in 1934. MacPhail installed lights at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field and introduced night baseball to the big leagues on May 24, 1935, when the Phillies played the Reds.
In 1938, MacPhail became general manager of the Dodgers and was promoted to team president a year later. MacPhail chose Leo Durocher, the fiery former Gashouse Gang Cardinals shortstop, to manage the Dodgers and brought Barber to Brooklyn from Cincinnati, where they had worked together with the Reds.
Barber’s folksy Southern charm and catchy phrasing on his Dodgers radio broadcasts entertained and attracted listeners. According to The Sporting News, Barber in 1939 helped “to establish a record attendance at Ebbets Field by the interest he aroused in the team.”
Modern technology
Television sets were demonstrated to the American public at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. A television set cost about $600, the same price as a new car.
The U.S. had fewer than 500 television sets in 1939 and most were in New York City, but advancements rapidly were occurring. In April 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first U.S. president to have a speech televised. A month later, in May 1939, a college baseball game featuring Princeton and Columbia was televised. A heavyweight bout between Lou Nova and Max Baer was televised in June 1939.
Alfred Morton, a NBC vice president in charge of their fledgling television division, was looking for more opportunities to test the technology. He called his friend, Barber, and asked whether he thought MacPhail would allow NBC to televise a major-league game from Ebbets Field. Barber agreed to find out.
In his 1968 book, “Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat,” Barber said he went to MacPhail’s office and said, “Larry, would you like to be the first man ever to put on a television broadcast of a major-league baseball game?”
MacPhail replied simply, “Yes.”
Barber said MacPhail didn’t charge NBC any rights fees. He only asked for the network to install a television set in the Ebbets Field press room so club officials and media could watch the telecast.
New world
In August 1939, NBC”s New York station, W2XBS, was on the air for four hours a day (2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.) and five days a week (Wednesday through Sunday).
“Television then was on about the same level of speculation as a trip to the moon is now,” Barber said. “It was feasible, within reach, about to happen, actually happening, but, even so, it was still away out in the future.”
Barber was chosen to be the broadcaster for the Saturday afternoon telecast from Ebbets Field. Only the first game of the doubleheader was televised.
NBC set up two cameras. One was near the visitors’ dugout on the third-base side and the other was on the second deck behind home plate.
Barber did his announcing from a seat among the fans in the upper deck behind third base because the radio broadcast was being done from the press box booth.
“I had to guess which way the camera was pointing, and I never knew for sure what was on the picture,” Barber said. “Burke Crotty was the director and every once in a while he would holler at me through the earphones that the camera was on second base now, or it was on the pitcher.”
Barber ad-libbed commercials for the three telecast sponsors _ Wheaties, Mobil Oil and Ivory Soap.
“They put the camera on me and I held up a box of Wheaties and poured them in a bowl,” Barber said. “I took a banana and a knife and I sliced the banana onto the Wheaties. Then I poured in some milk and said, ‘That’s the breakfast of champions.’
“I put on a Mobil service station cap and held up a can of oil. For Ivory Soap, I held up a bar of soap.”
After the Reds won the game, 5-2, before 33,535 spectators, Barber did television’s first postgame show on the field, interviewing Durocher, Reds manager Bill McKechnie, Dodgers first baseman Dolph Camilli and Reds pitcher Bucky Walters. Boxscore
“I got Camilli to show his hands on camera,” Barber recalled. “I had always been much impressed with the size, the agility, the dexterity, the grace, the beauty, the strength of Camilli’s hands.”
That’s entertainment
Public response to the telecast was “instantaneous and amazing,” according to The Sporting News.
The Television Building at the World Fair, which showed the telecast, had to shut its doors because the crowd wanting to get in was so great. A Broadway theater which showed the game on its television set “was swamped” with curious viewers, The Sporting News noted.
International News Service marveled at how the game could be seen by television viewers “as far as 50 miles away” from Brooklyn.
As for the quality of the telecast, International News Service reported, “At times, despite the great speed of play, the baseball was visible in the television image, particularly when pitchers Luke Hamlin and Bucky Walters resorted to slower delivery, or when the batter drove out a hit directly away from the iconoscope camera.”
According to The Sporting News, “The players were clearly distinguishable, but it was not possible to pick out the ball.”
On Sept. 30, 1939, a college football game between Waynesburg and Fordham was televised. A NFL game featuring Philadelphia and Brooklyn was televised a month later.
About 2,000 television sets were in use in the U.S. by 1940, but World War II slowed development because people and resources were needed for the military effort. At the close of World War II in 1945, there were 7,000 television sets in the U.S. and nine stations on the air. By 1960, the number of TV sets nationwide was 52 million.
On April 8, 1969, when the two-time defending National League champion Cardinals opened the season against the Pirates at St. Louis, Caray called the game from the Busch Memorial Stadium broadcast booth.
Brock, who transformed from an underachiever to a Hall of Famer after his trade from the Cubs to the Cardinals in 1964, joined the White Sox as a television analyst in 1981.
McLaughlin: “It will hit me during a game in the middle of the season. I’m sitting next to Tim McCarver, who has done 24 World Series, and I’m talking about the team I grew up cheering for, in the city I grew up in and love, and it’s like, ‘How did this happen?’
Pinch-hitting with two outs in the ninth inning of the second game of a Memorial Day doubleheader, Garagiola hit a three-run walkoff home run that erased a 3-1 deficit and lifted the Pirates to a 4-3 victory over the Cardinals on May 30, 1952.
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