August 26, 1939…First MLB Game On TV + Other Sports TV Firsts
August 26, 1939…First MLB Game On TV + Other Sports TV Firsts
The first ever Major League Baseball game was televised on August 26, 1939 on experimental station W2XBS, which is now WNBC. With Red Barber announcing, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds played a doubleheader at Ebbets Field. The Reds won the first, 5–2 while the Dodgers won the second, 6–1.
Barber called the first game on NBC Radio and moved to TV for the second game which he did without the benefit of a monitor, and with only two cameras capturing the game. One camera was close to Barber who had to sit in the stands near home base. The other was on the first base side up high. During the game, Red’s headset also went out so he was winging more than just the play by play action.
At the time, the New York World’s Fair was in full swing, as was RCA and NBC’s first big television push. Including the sets RCA had installed at the fair and around town, there were only about 400 receivers in the NYC area.
The first-ever televised baseball game had actually come four months earlier on May 17, 1939. That was a college game between Princeton and Columbia; Princeton beat Columbia 2–1 at Columbia’s Baker Field. The contest was aired on W2XBS and was announced by Bill Stern. Stern almost did not make the opening pitch of that game as he rushed home to get his hair piece.
On May 20, 1939, the first television picture was sent over telephone lines as NBC sent television images from Madison Square Gardens, to 30 Rockefeller Plaza via AT&T lines. Over the course of the six day bicycle race event, three broadcasts were done, with each being a little better than the last, due to some tweaking along the way by both AT&T and NBC.
On June 1, NBC would go on to bring boxing to television for the first time with the Lou Nova-Max Baer fight at Yankee Stadium.
September 30, NBC broadcast the first college football game, followed on October 22, by the first pro football game. Hockey made it television debut on NBC February 25, 1940, and basketball came to TV February 28th, with track and field events debuting on March 2, from MSG.
Remember, all this activity started in April of 1939 with the opening of The World’s Fair, when David Sarnoff told the nation that RCA had “added radio sight to sound”, and officially kicked off the age of television. -Bobby Ellerbee
Were all television sets, pre-late 40s, stand up models with a mirrored viewing surface? I like reading golden age comic book stories from the late 30s, early 40s, and the police chief or mayor always seemed to have this kind of TV in their office.
Reminds me of doing the new years cotton bowl
Ca game on very early t v days!
Nobody had a TV and I was a year old. And Time Warner was thinking how much they could charge for this show.