A History of Baseball on Television

CENTER FIELD SHOT A History of Baseball on Television 10 1 9 1 1 8 2 7 1 6 2 5 3 4 Earlier versions of the following chapters appeared in NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. © by the University of Nebraska Press: chapter 1, “The Experimental Years,” appeared as “Baseball on Television: The Formative Years, 1939–51,” in vol. 11, no. 2 (2003); chapter 3, “Team Approaches to Television in the Broadcast Era,” appeared as “Baseball and Television Origins: The Case of the Cubs,” in vol. 10, no. 1 (2001); chapter 7, “National Broadcasts in the Cable Era,” appeared as “Foul Tip or Strike Three: The Evolving ‘Partnership’ of Major League Baseball and Television” in vol. 3 (1995); chapter 10, “Television and the ‘Death’ of the Golden Age Minors,” appeared as “Did Televised Baseball Kill the ‘Golden Age’ of the Minor Leagues? A Reassessment,” in vol. 13, no. 1 (2004); and chapter 12, “Baseball and Television Synergy,” appeared as “Whatever Happened to Synergy? Major League Baseball as Media Product,” in vol. 13, no. 2 (2005). ¶ © 2008 by James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy Jr. ¶ All rights reserved ¶ Manufactured in the United States of America ¶ Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data ¶ Walker, James R. ¶ Center fi eld shot: a history of baseball on television / James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy Jr. ¶ p. cm. ¶ Includes bibliographical references and index. ¶ isbn 978-0- 8032-4825-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) ¶ 1. Television broadcasting of sports— United States—History. 2. Baseball— United States—History. I. Bellamy, Robert V. II. Title. ¶ gv742.3.w35 2008 070.4؅497960973—dc22 ¶ Set in ¶ Quadraat by Bob Reitz. ¶ Designed by R. W. Boeche. Some images have been masked due to copyright limitations. Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction: The Game in the Box xi Part I: The Local Game 1. The Experimental Years 3 2. The First Seasons of Televised Baseball 22 3. Team Approaches to Television in the Broadcast Era 43 Part II: The National Game 4. Televising the World Series 67 5. Origins of the Game of the Week 97 6. The National Television Package, 1966–89 120 7. National Broadcasts in the Cable Era 146 8. The Pay Television Era 163 Part III: Television and Baseball’s Dysfunctional Marriage 9. Television As Threat, Television As Savior 179 10. Television and the “Death” of the Golden Age Minors 204 11. Baseball, Television, Congress, and the Law 219 12. Baseball and Television Synergy 236 Part IV: How the Game Was Covered 13. The Announcer in the Television Age 257 14. Innovations in Production Practices 277 Epilogue: Baseball in the Advanced Media Age 311 Appendix A: Televised Baseball Games, 1949–81 323 Notes 335 Index 371 Illustrations 1. The anticipation of tv baseball is as old as television 4 2. A 1931 illustration of a game reportedly televised in Japan 5 3. nbc’s fi rst baseball telecast, a college game in May 1939 8 4. A photograph of a tv image from nbc’s fi rst game 9 5. Bill Stern conducts the fi rst post-game interview 10 6. Red Barber interviews Leo Durocher, August 1939 12 7. Two cameras covered the game from the third base stands at Ebbets Field, 1940 19 8. A dying Babe Ruth receives a tv from rca 23 9. Baseball sold televisions even if the images on the sets were fake 25 10. Older stadiums were not designed for television coverage 32 11. Many fans saw their fi rst game at a tavern 69 12. Bostonians watch the 1948 World Series on receivers on the Boston Commons 74 13. Ford Frick and Happy Chandler 80 14. San Franciscans stand in the rain to catch a glimpse of game one of the 1951 Dodgers-and-Giants playoff 85 15. A Chicago cabby makes sure his fares can follow the 1956 World Series 88 16. Pee Wee Reese watches his teammates on television 91 17. Leo Durocher and Lindsey Nelson 105 18. Jack Buck 108 19. Roone Arledge hires Jackie Robinson 115 20. Ford Frick looks at his nfl and nba counterparts 118 21. By 1966, sponsors thought too many of Dizzy Dean’s fans looked like these old-timers 124 22. Bowie Kuhn 129 23. Joe Garagiola 132 24. Howard Cosell 139 25. Tony Kubek 141 26. Peter Ueberroth 150 27. Bob Costas 152 28. Yogi Berra 239 29. Mel Allen 261 30. Vin Scully 262 31. Red Barber 275 32. The earliest games often used two press-box cameras, Yankee Stadium 281 33. Harry Coyle 284 34. A fan gets a better view of the game on television 287 35. The arrangement of hdtv cameras at a recent Chicago Cubs’ game 290 36. Baseball games are covered by as many as three center fi eld cameras 293 Table Local Station Television Coverage of Major League Baseball, 1949 34 Acknowledgments Jim Walker Rob Bellamy has been my collaborator on many ventures since our paths fi rst crossed at the University of Iowa in 1980. His spirited insights and decade-long dedication to this project helped make it a reality, while his sharp wit made working on it more fun than it should be. I would like to thank the staff at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library for their help in locating and providing at modest cost many of the photographs used in this book. In addition, the Hall of Fame’s television fi les, collected over decades, also made a major contribution to this volume. Steve Gietschier, senior managing editor of the Sporting News, gave me entry to the sn archives’ extensive clippings fi le on television and related topics, and offered many helpful suggestions. He also re- minded me that history should be more than “the lies told by the living about the dead.” The staff at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Joyce Sports Research Collection at the University of Notre Dame also provided considerable assistance in accessing their important holdings. I would like to thank Margaret Schmidt and her students for their many helpful comments on the initial drafts of several chapters. I am most grateful to Saint Xavier University for providing the sabbatical leave that allowed me to complete my portion of this book. Joel Sternberg, my friend and colleague at sxu, provided me with many articles contain- ing essential information on early televised baseball. Our conversations about this project over the years were immensely valuable. Finally, I dedicate my portion of this book to my wife, Judith Hiltner, whose belief in and support for my scholarly efforts have made them possible. Rob Bellamy Jim Walker has been a great friend and coauthor for over twenty-fi ve years. Our relationship is one I value and am thankful for having. Thanks also to Jim’s wife, Judith Hiltner, for her skillful copyediting. Special acknowledgments thanks to the late Bill Kirwin of NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Cul- ture for giving us an outlet to try out early chapter drafts at the always delightful NINE Spring Training Conference and within the pages of the journal. As most authors know, our work would not turn out as well (if at all) and would not be nearly as fulfi lling without the support of our loved ones. Thanks to my wife, Catherine Cecil Bellamy, for her essential love and support. My daughter, Kate Bellamy, deserves special thanks. She is truly an inspiration for all that I do. She has been amazingly tolerant of the Pi- rates, although they have not had a winning season in her lifetime. Like her mother, she has also been a real trouper when it comes to my travel, writing schedule, moodiness, and idiosyncrasies. Kate, this one is for you. x Introduction The Game in the Box In an end-of-the-millennium feature on “The Top 100 Things That Im- pacted Baseball in the 20th Century,” Baseball Weekly listed television as second only to Jackie Robinson’s signing. Television was cited for ex- posing Major League Baseball (mlb) to a much larger audience, gener- ating a fi nancial windfall for owners, increasing the value of franchises exponentially, and, with the development of cable, changing “the way Americans followed the game.”1 We agree with Baseball Weekly’s analysis. And today, a few years into the twenty-fi rst century, television’s impact on each of these elements— team revenue enhancement, franchise values, and ways we follow the game—has become even more prominent. More importantly, Major League Baseball owners fi nally may have learned how to partner with, rather than fi ght, television, making the game’s dysfunctional “marriage” to television more harmonious. Perhaps the greatest impact of television on Major League Baseball was to make mlb a common synonym for “baseball.” Although the big league game had a privileged position before the video medium, the U.S. television industry has focused most of the nation’s attention on the mlb version of the game. Nightly espn Sportscenter highlights record nearly every signifi cant mlb “dinger,” “punch-out,” and defensive “web gem,” while only the most extraordinary moments from the minor leagues, college or high school baseball, or international competition receive any exposure. In the United States, virtually every mlb game is telecast over some combination of broadcast, cable, satellite, or Internet. But minor league games are rarely telecast, college games are cablecast during the College World Series, and international games come to prominence only during the mlb player–dominated World Baseball Classic. Though television has magnifi ed both the best and worst that Major League Baseball has to offer, it has offered only a distant glimpse of much of the rest of the sport.

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