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Rosen 1
Steven Rosen
Dr. Blake
Final Research Paper
5/11/2015
The Technology that Saved America’s Pastime
The decision to move-across-country for the world-famous Brooklyn Dodgers in 1957
was bold one. On May 28th, 1957, National League owners unanimously voted to allow both the
New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers to move to California. The Giants, led by Willy
“the Say Hey Kid” Mays, were headed to the Golden Gate City, while Jackie Robinson and his
Dodgers were on the move to the City of Angels. The move came as a bit of a surprise to the
average baseball fan, which saw only rich tradition and storied success within the Dodgers
organization.
In the years leading up to 1957, the Dodgers had won five pennants and one World Series
in eight short years. The team carried a reputation as being one of the best in the business.
However, Ebbets Field remained the home stadium for the ball club, and Dodgers owner Walter
O’Malley understood his team’s future was in jeopardy if they continued to play there. O’Malley
asked the city of New York to allow him to build a brand new, state of the art facility, but he was
denied by New York City council on multiple occasions. O’Malley saw Ebbets Field’s
limitations, its inability to sell-out games due to its outdated amenities (even in the middle of a
pennant race), and lack of a future in Brooklyn. He threatened to make a significant change for
his organization if a new stadium was not built, but the city and league took his threats as bluffs.
In an effort to change that, O’Malley made a move that he felt could not be seen as any
type of bluff; in fact, it became the move that solidified his intentions to actually move the
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Brooklyn Dodgers. On January 4th, 1957 he took a trip to Los Angeles, where O’Malley
continued previous meetings that discussed the possibility of a Major League Franchise
relocating to Los Angeles. The even bigger move came a few days later, when O’Malley
purchased a 44-passenger airplane that had the ability to travel across country. The plane,
pictured in figure 1, cost the team $734,9008.96 and became the new number one means of
transportation. O’Malley was quoted in the Associated Press that day saying, “This is the first
time a major league club has bought an airplane,” he said, “We tried a plane once before
experimentally to transport our farm clubs but the DC-3 we used was too small. So, we decided
to get a bigger one” (Walteromalley.com).
The purchase of the plane and the constant trips to Los Angeles all but ended baseball in
Brooklyn. After ignoring O’Malley’s previous threats, New York City Mayor Robert Wagner
wrote a telegram to the Dodgers owner (see figure 2) in which he stated:
“The Dodgers are uniquely identified with this city. It would be a great loss to the
community if anyone of its three major league teams departed. I realize that the problem
of appropriate facilities poses serious problems for the Dodger management. As you
know I have been deeply concerned with the problem. I am hopeful that the city
administration will be able to aid in its solution.” (Walteromalley.com)
O’Malley no longer wanted to listen, and the Dodgers were off to Los Angeles on their brand
new, Convair 440 Metropolitain twin-engine plane. The City of Los Angeles anticipated the
teams’ arrival, as shown by the April 18th, 1958 front page of the Los Angeles Times (see figure
3) with the title, “L.A. Greets the Dodgers, 90,000 Fans Expected” (Los Angeles Times). The
Dodgers were in the middle of making one of the most influential and significant changes to the
development of professional sports in our country’s history.
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The Dodgers move across country shifted the entire landscape of Major League Baseball
and created a new era for the game. Prior to the move, the league was restricted to teams playing
solely in the Eastern and Mid-Western parts of the United States, but the move was the first to
allow for an extremely successful geographic transformation of the league. This transformation
allowed the league to grow and be represented in every region of he country. However, the move
was not possible without a number of monumental changes that took place in the early part of the
1950’s, both throughout the United States and as a result, within the game of baseball. No single
league in U.S. Professional Sports saw as much change and improvement to its respected game
as Major League Baseball did over the these years. Due to specific technological advances
within television production, broadcasting capabilities, and air travel, 1950s baseball became the
most significant era in the game’s history, and has remained that way for 60 years. In addition,
no other sport in the twentieth century went through as much of a transformation that baseball
went through in just those ten years, both on and off the field. In a time where the game was
recovering from a previous decade of hardship, the combination of these technological
advancements of the 1950s and the Brooklyn Dodgers now being able to move across country
because of them, created the decade that saved “America’s Pastime.”
Nine years earlier, after the 1941 season, Major League Baseball was at what seemed to
be its peak. In fact, it was a year where star players were performing at extraordinary levels. Red
Sox legend Ted Williams had a batting average over .400, and Yankee great Joe DiMaggio hit
safely for a record 56 straight games (esb.com - Elias Sports Bureau). But later that December
the mindset of almost every major leaguer changed in an instant, as the Japanese army attacked
the United States at Pearl Harbor, and baseball players were needed for something other than
their skill on the diamond. Gary Bedingfield, author of Baseball in World War II, writes that the
Rosen 4
rush of patriotism that hit our country at the time of the attack was no different within the Major
Leagues. According to Elias Sports Bureau, over 500 Major League Baseball players rushed to
trade their metal cleats for combat boots between 1941 and 1945. Hugh Mulcahy was the first to
be drafted, and others willingly chose to follow in his footsteps. Future Hall of Famer and the
1940 League’s Most Valuable Player recipient, “Hammerin” Hang Greenberg received his draft
call on May 7th, 1941. Greenberg chose to give up his salary of $55,000 a year for $21 a month to
serve his country (Bedingfield). “If there’s any last message to be given to the public, let it be
that I’m going to be a good solder,” Greenber told The Sporting News in their May of 1941
publication (Bedingfield).
The same star players that dominated the league earlier in the year now had to compete
for something far more serious than a World Series title. Williams, DiMaggio, World Series
legend Bob Feller, and Stan “The Man” Musial were just a few of the well-known names to enter
the line of duty, however Robert Weintrob, author of “Three Reichs, You’re Out” noted that
these players were intentionally kept off the front lines during the time they served (Weintrob).
Weintrob claimed many Americans raised the question, should baseball be played during a time
when our country is at war? 23 years earlier, in the midst of World War I, the league chose to
end the 1918 regular season. The public raised an interesting argument and the answer was up
for great debate. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, including President Roosevelt, who on
January 15th, 1942 wrote his famous, “Green Light” letter (see figure 4), in which he said, “I
honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. The quality of the
teams might be lowered with the greater use of older players replacing young men going into
military service, but this would not dampen the popularity of the sport” (Walteromalley.com). In
addition, in their April 1942 edition, Sporting News published a poll asking service men how
Rosen 5
they felt about the idea of continuing baseball through the years of the war. The results were
overwhelmingly in favor of playing on. Private John E. Stevenson, who was based in Fort Dix,
New Jersey, was quoted in the report stating, “Baseball is apart of the American way of life.
Remove it and you remove something from the live of American Citizens, soldiers and sailors”
(Bedingfield).
Both the President and Private Stevenson made great points, but their optimism was
quickly shut down by the harsh reality that a World War would have on a seemingly meaningless
game. Ted Williams giving 110% on every play of every game, and Joe DiMaggio refusing to
break his mental focus for a single day was what made baseball apart of the American way of
life, and when they were removed from the game, America lost interest. 500 of the greatest
players in the game were missing and over 4,076 minor leaguers were sent to battle. This
completely diminished the often praised, talent-loaded minor league system, originally composed
of 44 circuits, but down to just 12 at the time of the war (americanveteranscenter.org).
The lack of talent and star-power, something that was such a key component to the
league’s success in its earlier years, combined with the gruesome events filling America’s media,
made baseball no longer a priority to the general public. Frank Graham was a famous
sportswriter of the time, and wrote a weekly column for the Journal-American titled, “Graham’s
Corner” often later published in Baseball Digest. In this 1946 edition of the magazine (see figure
5) Graham was extremely critical of the league, and wrote that the game had become “the tall
men against the fat men at the company picnic” and added that the game was a shadow of the
real thing (Weintruab 1). According to Baseball Reference, league attendance reached as low as
9,000 fans in attendance per game in 1949. (baseballreference.com)
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With the surrender of the Nazi Army and the war coming to a close, players began
returning home. However, because of the long process and high number of players returning at
slow rates and different times, their return alone was not enough to bring the game back to where
it once was. The television set, once considered a novelty for the American family in the 1940’s,
but newly developed in the 1950s, would help baseball begin its resurgence as America’s
Pastime.
In his essay, “One Nation Under Television: Rise and Decline of Network TV” J. Fred
MacDonald wrote that televised sporting events were born when a baseball game between Ivy
League Universities, Columbia and Princeton aired on May 17th, 1939 (MacDonald 1). The first
major league game to be televised came shortly after in August of the same year, when the
Brooklyn (at the time) Dodgers hosted the Cincinnati Reds at Ebbets Field. According to Evan
Andrews, author of “Major League Baseball Makes Television Debut 75 Years Ago” an
estimated 33,000 fans were in attendance for the game, compared to the 3,000 that watched the
game live on television (Evans 1). While the potential was there, the future for baseball on
television was still a few years away.
It is estimated that a total of 7,000 television sets were in use in 1946, and Stanley Baran,
an author from the Museum of Broadcast Communications explained that this number displayed
the little interest Americans showed towards television in the 1940s (Baran). However, Baran
explains that the development of the television near the end of the 40’s and early 50’s, in terms
of accessibility, product quality, and price all were improving rapidly. He writes an estimated
190,000 sets were in use in 1948, just two years later (Baran). Additionally, he claims that just
12 years later this number reached an estimated 50 million sets in use by the end of 1960
(Baran). The television was no longer a novelty by any means, and more families than ever were
Rosen 7
gathering in the living room to watch their favorite shows. In fact, the number of households
with at least one television set increased from one million, to 44 million between 1949-1969,
according to Andrea Ryan, author of “A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance”
(Ryan 7).
Most people within the league and fans who followed the game failed to see the potential
future for sports and television, as they were more worried that television would have negative
effects on the attendance rates for games. On the other hand, broadcast companies such as NBC,
CBS, and ABC were able to look past this, and could see the unbelievable things television could
do for the game and for their companies.
First off, live sports were live entertainment, meaning the cost of production for sports,
and specifically baseball, was minimal. There were not sets to be made, no actors to pay, and no
writers to find, the entertainment and stage was provided for them, and little needed to be done
for production. Additionally, the time period did not provide much entertainment on television
that targeted as specific of an audience that live baseball did. The common baseball fan tuning in
to watch live games were white, upper-middle class (Bellamy 1). The target audience was a
dream come true for manufacturers of products looking to sell to the specific demographic, such
as shaving, alcohol, tobacco, and car companies. For example, a company like Budweiser used
the three hour time frame to market their beer to baseball fans with commercials such as the one
shown in figure 6, released in 1956 and aired during numerous live games.
The increased interest in advertising allowed television production companies to improve
their footage of live games, and increase the dollars spent towards television and film
technology. James R. Walker discussed these changes in his book, Center Field Shot: A History
of Baseball on Television. The first live game featured two cameras, according to Walker, one
Rosen 8
positioned in front of the visiting team dugout, and the other behind home plate. The fact that the
field was limited to only two different angles, combined with the sunlight during most day
games, made seeing the game in 1939 extremely difficult. By 1951, WCBS was televising it’s
first game in color, and by 1953 major technology changes began taking place within the
production of live sports. 1953 now had four, black and white cameras with fixed lenses, all
located on the Mezzanine level of the stadium (see figure 7). The cameras had improved lenses
and now included text-graphics on the screen and improved audio quality from the press box and
around the stadium, and both created a more interactive viewing experience for fans. By 1957, a
fifth camera was added to center field, and lenses now included zoom capabilities (Walker). The
overall viewing experience was improved so drastically that companies continued to produce
more and more live baseball. In 1955 fans saw the first televised World Series in color, and an
estimated 38 million viewers watched, a staggering number compared to the 3,000 that saw the
first televised game in 1939 (Walker). 1957 brought Saturday and Sunday “feature games”, and
1958 showed the first televised West Coast game. According to Baran, in 1962 ABC, NBC, and
CBS committed to over $80 million spent towards sports programming, a quarter of which was
committed to baseball (Baran 1). And as early as 1965, ABC was providing the country with the
first ever, nation-wide broadcasts on regional basis at a consistent rate. Local television
companies followed their team’s home and away schedule while national television companies
would offer prime-time games, and together the two increased the popularity of the game.
Not only was the technology becoming more advanced, but the television set allowed
Major League baseball to take advantage of the same thing it did prior to World War II, it’s star-
power. For the first time ever, highlight reels, interviews, footage of the game’s best players
could be exposed to fans like never before. The best players of the decade, such as Yogi Berra,
Rosen 9
Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew, Jackie Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, and Willie
Mays could all now be seen from the comfort of one’s own living room, rather than the few
occasional times throughout the year that a fan could go see the one iconic player on his most
local team live and in person. In addition, the league was able to televise the world-famous,
Major League All Star Game for the first time in 1957 (mlb.com). The television allowed Major
League Baseball to market it’s game with their best assets, the stars of the time.
While baseball clearly benefited from all of this, they were not the only ones. The
manufacturers of television sets also saw rapidly increased sells, mentioned above with the
extraordinary amount of televisions sold in the decade. The league used the television to sell
baseball, while companies used baseball to sell the television. For example, this can be seen in
figure 8, an advertisement for a Victor Television set featuring a baseball pitcher and a football
quarterback that read, “See them on COLOR TV.” This concept can be seen again in figure 9, a
second advertisement from 1950, this time for a Westinghouse television set with a headline that
read, “Reserve Seats to the Ball Game for Less than the price of a Hot Dog & Pop.” Baseball
was no longer just apart of the American way of life; it was now apart of the American home.
Now that the game had become a closer representation to what it was prior to the war, it
was time for the league to expand geographically. In 1950, the league consisted of 16 total
teams, represented by only seven states, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania,
Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as the Washington Senators, who played in Washington,
DC (see figure 10) (baseballreference.com). Between 1900 and 1950, not a single major league
franchise relocated, and the league was represented only in the Northeast and Midwest, which
limited just how much the league could be considered a national entity. (Treder 1)
Rosen 10
The difference between the 1950s and the years prior, was the advancement in air travel
technology. For as long as the game had been around, teams traveled to and from games, to and
from spring training, and to and from the ballpark by train. Because baseball has always had a
grueling schedule that consisted of so many games in so few days, the only reasonable solution
was to keep teams relatively close to each other, at least close enough to travel by train. Cost-
effective air travel was slowly starting to become more popular in the early parts of the 1950s,
and this concept made the dream of a Major League Baseball being represented throughout the
entire country a reality. Finally, teams were able to purchase jets at an affordable cost, as
O’Malley did in 1954, travel to and from ballparks by plain at an efficient rate, and could now
expand to new markets, some of which were better suited for a baseball franchise than even the
original cities were. Better weather, more interested fans in targeted areas, and the push
westward from many Americans had baseball following the same path as the rest of the country.
Before the end of the 1950s, nearly a third of the 16 original franchises relocated (Treder 1). Five
additional franchises were created, and the league was the biggest and covered a wider range
geographically it ever had before, including the Dodgers and Giants playing on the Pacific Coast.
The 1950s became the most significant geographic realignment of a sport in our nation’s history.
There is great irony in a discussion regarding baseball in this time period. A game that
prides itself on tradition, pastime and the discouragement of any change, needed exactly that to
survive. In 1950, 16 teams from only seven states represented Major League Baseball. By 1965,
there were a total of 20 Major League Franchises that represented 13 different states, three of
which played in California (baseballreference.com). Average stadium attendance rates reached as
high as an estimated 17,000 fans per game in 1966, almost doubling the 9,000 fans per game that
attended in 1950 (baseballreference.com). In addition, the top four teams to the lead the league in
Rosen 11
attendance that season were four expansions or relocated teams, as the Los Angeles Dodgers,
Houston Astros, New York Mets, and San Francisco Giants ranked one through four in
attendance per game that season (baseballreference.com). Walter O’Malley’s decision to move
the Dodgers proved to be a great one, as his team went on to lead the league in fan attendance for
six consecutive years, from 1960-1966 while playing in their state of the art Dodgers Stadium.
Not only did they sell the most tickets, but the Dodgers went on to win the World Series in 1959,
1963, and 1965, three out of their first nine seasons playing in Los Angeles. Their 1965 World
Series win was televised lived on NBC, as Dodger legend Sandy Koufax pitched his way to a
World Series Most Valuable Player Award, and the Dodgers beat the Twins in a game seven
matchup with over 50,000 fans packed into Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota
(baseballreference.com). An additional 50 million households were able to watch the series live
from their television set at home.
Most would argue that the best part of baseball is it’s tradition, it’s museum-like history,
and it’s legendary tales, and most would be absolutely correct. However, the 1950s show that as
times evolve, and the world around us does too, businesses and consumers living in it have to do
the same. The changes that the game of baseball went through during the decade accurately
represent what the rest of the country was experiencing at the same time. Whether it was
baseball, the Civil Rights Movement, or the Communist Scare, the world was adapting, and those
living in it were forced to do the same.
Rosen 12
Figure 1: The Dodgers newly purchased, twin engine
Convair plane
Figure 2: Telegram from New York City Major Robert
Wagner to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley urging
him not to move the Dodgers
Figure 3: Front page of the Los Angeles Times
expressing the anticipation from fans waiting for the
arrival of the Los Angeles Dodgers
Rosen 13
Figure 4: President Roosevelt’s “Green Light” letter
expressing his interest in keeping baseball running.
Figure 5: 1946 edition of Baseball Digest, including
Frank Graham’s, “Graham’s Corner
Figure 6: A 1956 Budweiser commercial that often aired
during live baseball games towards the end of the 1950s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpo1uGO28aM
Rosen 14
Figure 7: NBC broadcasting a live game from the
Mezzanine level of a ballpark
Figure 8: A 1950 Victor TV advertisement that reads,
“See them on Color TV”
Figure 9: A Westinghouse television advertisement
Rosen 15
Figure 10: A map of the cities represented in major
league baseball prior to 1950
Rosen 16
Works Cited
Access On-Line Project – TV0814. Television (1939-1957) 1950. John W. Hartman
Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare
Book & Manuscript Library
Baran, Stanley. "The Museum of Broadcast Communications - Encyclopedia of
Television - Sports and Television." The Museum of Broadcast Communications - Encyclopedia
of Television - Sports and Television. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
"Baseball America - The Best News in Baseball." BaseballAmerica.com. N.p., n.d. Web.
13 May 2015.
"Baseball Goes To War: The National Pastime In World War II." American Veterans
Center Baseball Goes To War The National Pastime In World War II Comments. N.p., n.d. Web.
15 May 2015.
"Baseball Owners Allow Dodgers and Giants to Move." History.com. A&E Television
Networks, 28 May 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
"Baseball Reference." Baseball-Reference.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
Bedingfield, Gary. "Baseball in Wartime - Baseball in WWII." Baseball in Wartime -
Baseball in WWII. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
Bellamy, Robert V. “Impact of the Television Marketplace on the Structure of Major
League Baseball.” Journal of Broadcasting and Eloctronic Media
Berkman, Dave. “Long before Arledge…Sports and TV: The Earliest Years: 1937-1947
– As seen by the Contemporary Press.” Journal of Popular Culture, Fall 1988
"Budweiser Commercial 1956." Youtube.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.
Rosen 17
Durocher, Leo. "Los Angeles Will Love the Dodgers." The Los Angeles Times 9 May
1958: n. pag. Print.
"ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU" Elias Sports Bureau. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
Erskine, Carl, and Vin Scully. Carl Erskine's Tales from the Dodger Dugout: Extra
Innings. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub., 2004. Print.
Macdonald, Fred. "Sports and Television." Sports and Television. N.p., n.d. Web. 13
May 2015.
"L.A. Greets Dodgers: 90,000 Fans Expected." The Los Angeles Times 18 Apr. 1958: n.
pag. Print.
Lindholm, Scott. "Major League Attendance Trends Past, Present, and Future." Beyond
the Box Score. N.p., 10 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015.
Neal-Lunsford, J. “Sport in the Land of Television: the Use of Sport in Network Prime-
Time Schedules 1946-1950.” Journal of Sport History. 1992
O’Neil, T. The Game Behind the Game: High Pressure, High Stakes in Television Sports.
New York: Harper and Row, 1989
Powers, R. Supertube: The Rise of Television Sports. New York: Dial Press, 1984
Ryan, Andrea. A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance. N.p.: President and
Fellows of Harvard College, n.d. Print. Business History Review 85.
Rushin, Steve. “1954-1994: How We Got Here. Sports Illustrated, 16 August 1994
Spence, J. Up Close and Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television and Sports.
New York: Free Press, 1984
Sullivan, Neil J. The Dodgers Move West. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print.
Treder, Steve. "Dig the 1950s." The Hardball Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
Rosen 18
Walker, James Robert. Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television. Lincoln.
U of Nebraska. 2008. Print
"Walter O'Malley : Official Website." Walter O'Malley : Official Website. N.p., n.d.
Web. 13 May 2015.
Weintraub, Robert. "The Amazing Story of the U.S. Military’s Integrated "World Series"
in Hitler Youth Stadium in 1945." Www.slate.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.

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The Technology that Saved Baseball

  • 1. Rosen 1 Steven Rosen Dr. Blake Final Research Paper 5/11/2015 The Technology that Saved America’s Pastime The decision to move-across-country for the world-famous Brooklyn Dodgers in 1957 was bold one. On May 28th, 1957, National League owners unanimously voted to allow both the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers to move to California. The Giants, led by Willy “the Say Hey Kid” Mays, were headed to the Golden Gate City, while Jackie Robinson and his Dodgers were on the move to the City of Angels. The move came as a bit of a surprise to the average baseball fan, which saw only rich tradition and storied success within the Dodgers organization. In the years leading up to 1957, the Dodgers had won five pennants and one World Series in eight short years. The team carried a reputation as being one of the best in the business. However, Ebbets Field remained the home stadium for the ball club, and Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley understood his team’s future was in jeopardy if they continued to play there. O’Malley asked the city of New York to allow him to build a brand new, state of the art facility, but he was denied by New York City council on multiple occasions. O’Malley saw Ebbets Field’s limitations, its inability to sell-out games due to its outdated amenities (even in the middle of a pennant race), and lack of a future in Brooklyn. He threatened to make a significant change for his organization if a new stadium was not built, but the city and league took his threats as bluffs. In an effort to change that, O’Malley made a move that he felt could not be seen as any type of bluff; in fact, it became the move that solidified his intentions to actually move the
  • 2. Rosen 2 Brooklyn Dodgers. On January 4th, 1957 he took a trip to Los Angeles, where O’Malley continued previous meetings that discussed the possibility of a Major League Franchise relocating to Los Angeles. The even bigger move came a few days later, when O’Malley purchased a 44-passenger airplane that had the ability to travel across country. The plane, pictured in figure 1, cost the team $734,9008.96 and became the new number one means of transportation. O’Malley was quoted in the Associated Press that day saying, “This is the first time a major league club has bought an airplane,” he said, “We tried a plane once before experimentally to transport our farm clubs but the DC-3 we used was too small. So, we decided to get a bigger one” (Walteromalley.com). The purchase of the plane and the constant trips to Los Angeles all but ended baseball in Brooklyn. After ignoring O’Malley’s previous threats, New York City Mayor Robert Wagner wrote a telegram to the Dodgers owner (see figure 2) in which he stated: “The Dodgers are uniquely identified with this city. It would be a great loss to the community if anyone of its three major league teams departed. I realize that the problem of appropriate facilities poses serious problems for the Dodger management. As you know I have been deeply concerned with the problem. I am hopeful that the city administration will be able to aid in its solution.” (Walteromalley.com) O’Malley no longer wanted to listen, and the Dodgers were off to Los Angeles on their brand new, Convair 440 Metropolitain twin-engine plane. The City of Los Angeles anticipated the teams’ arrival, as shown by the April 18th, 1958 front page of the Los Angeles Times (see figure 3) with the title, “L.A. Greets the Dodgers, 90,000 Fans Expected” (Los Angeles Times). The Dodgers were in the middle of making one of the most influential and significant changes to the development of professional sports in our country’s history.
  • 3. Rosen 3 The Dodgers move across country shifted the entire landscape of Major League Baseball and created a new era for the game. Prior to the move, the league was restricted to teams playing solely in the Eastern and Mid-Western parts of the United States, but the move was the first to allow for an extremely successful geographic transformation of the league. This transformation allowed the league to grow and be represented in every region of he country. However, the move was not possible without a number of monumental changes that took place in the early part of the 1950’s, both throughout the United States and as a result, within the game of baseball. No single league in U.S. Professional Sports saw as much change and improvement to its respected game as Major League Baseball did over the these years. Due to specific technological advances within television production, broadcasting capabilities, and air travel, 1950s baseball became the most significant era in the game’s history, and has remained that way for 60 years. In addition, no other sport in the twentieth century went through as much of a transformation that baseball went through in just those ten years, both on and off the field. In a time where the game was recovering from a previous decade of hardship, the combination of these technological advancements of the 1950s and the Brooklyn Dodgers now being able to move across country because of them, created the decade that saved “America’s Pastime.” Nine years earlier, after the 1941 season, Major League Baseball was at what seemed to be its peak. In fact, it was a year where star players were performing at extraordinary levels. Red Sox legend Ted Williams had a batting average over .400, and Yankee great Joe DiMaggio hit safely for a record 56 straight games (esb.com - Elias Sports Bureau). But later that December the mindset of almost every major leaguer changed in an instant, as the Japanese army attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor, and baseball players were needed for something other than their skill on the diamond. Gary Bedingfield, author of Baseball in World War II, writes that the
  • 4. Rosen 4 rush of patriotism that hit our country at the time of the attack was no different within the Major Leagues. According to Elias Sports Bureau, over 500 Major League Baseball players rushed to trade their metal cleats for combat boots between 1941 and 1945. Hugh Mulcahy was the first to be drafted, and others willingly chose to follow in his footsteps. Future Hall of Famer and the 1940 League’s Most Valuable Player recipient, “Hammerin” Hang Greenberg received his draft call on May 7th, 1941. Greenberg chose to give up his salary of $55,000 a year for $21 a month to serve his country (Bedingfield). “If there’s any last message to be given to the public, let it be that I’m going to be a good solder,” Greenber told The Sporting News in their May of 1941 publication (Bedingfield). The same star players that dominated the league earlier in the year now had to compete for something far more serious than a World Series title. Williams, DiMaggio, World Series legend Bob Feller, and Stan “The Man” Musial were just a few of the well-known names to enter the line of duty, however Robert Weintrob, author of “Three Reichs, You’re Out” noted that these players were intentionally kept off the front lines during the time they served (Weintrob). Weintrob claimed many Americans raised the question, should baseball be played during a time when our country is at war? 23 years earlier, in the midst of World War I, the league chose to end the 1918 regular season. The public raised an interesting argument and the answer was up for great debate. Everyone seemed to have an opinion, including President Roosevelt, who on January 15th, 1942 wrote his famous, “Green Light” letter (see figure 4), in which he said, “I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going. The quality of the teams might be lowered with the greater use of older players replacing young men going into military service, but this would not dampen the popularity of the sport” (Walteromalley.com). In addition, in their April 1942 edition, Sporting News published a poll asking service men how
  • 5. Rosen 5 they felt about the idea of continuing baseball through the years of the war. The results were overwhelmingly in favor of playing on. Private John E. Stevenson, who was based in Fort Dix, New Jersey, was quoted in the report stating, “Baseball is apart of the American way of life. Remove it and you remove something from the live of American Citizens, soldiers and sailors” (Bedingfield). Both the President and Private Stevenson made great points, but their optimism was quickly shut down by the harsh reality that a World War would have on a seemingly meaningless game. Ted Williams giving 110% on every play of every game, and Joe DiMaggio refusing to break his mental focus for a single day was what made baseball apart of the American way of life, and when they were removed from the game, America lost interest. 500 of the greatest players in the game were missing and over 4,076 minor leaguers were sent to battle. This completely diminished the often praised, talent-loaded minor league system, originally composed of 44 circuits, but down to just 12 at the time of the war (americanveteranscenter.org). The lack of talent and star-power, something that was such a key component to the league’s success in its earlier years, combined with the gruesome events filling America’s media, made baseball no longer a priority to the general public. Frank Graham was a famous sportswriter of the time, and wrote a weekly column for the Journal-American titled, “Graham’s Corner” often later published in Baseball Digest. In this 1946 edition of the magazine (see figure 5) Graham was extremely critical of the league, and wrote that the game had become “the tall men against the fat men at the company picnic” and added that the game was a shadow of the real thing (Weintruab 1). According to Baseball Reference, league attendance reached as low as 9,000 fans in attendance per game in 1949. (baseballreference.com)
  • 6. Rosen 6 With the surrender of the Nazi Army and the war coming to a close, players began returning home. However, because of the long process and high number of players returning at slow rates and different times, their return alone was not enough to bring the game back to where it once was. The television set, once considered a novelty for the American family in the 1940’s, but newly developed in the 1950s, would help baseball begin its resurgence as America’s Pastime. In his essay, “One Nation Under Television: Rise and Decline of Network TV” J. Fred MacDonald wrote that televised sporting events were born when a baseball game between Ivy League Universities, Columbia and Princeton aired on May 17th, 1939 (MacDonald 1). The first major league game to be televised came shortly after in August of the same year, when the Brooklyn (at the time) Dodgers hosted the Cincinnati Reds at Ebbets Field. According to Evan Andrews, author of “Major League Baseball Makes Television Debut 75 Years Ago” an estimated 33,000 fans were in attendance for the game, compared to the 3,000 that watched the game live on television (Evans 1). While the potential was there, the future for baseball on television was still a few years away. It is estimated that a total of 7,000 television sets were in use in 1946, and Stanley Baran, an author from the Museum of Broadcast Communications explained that this number displayed the little interest Americans showed towards television in the 1940s (Baran). However, Baran explains that the development of the television near the end of the 40’s and early 50’s, in terms of accessibility, product quality, and price all were improving rapidly. He writes an estimated 190,000 sets were in use in 1948, just two years later (Baran). Additionally, he claims that just 12 years later this number reached an estimated 50 million sets in use by the end of 1960 (Baran). The television was no longer a novelty by any means, and more families than ever were
  • 7. Rosen 7 gathering in the living room to watch their favorite shows. In fact, the number of households with at least one television set increased from one million, to 44 million between 1949-1969, according to Andrea Ryan, author of “A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance” (Ryan 7). Most people within the league and fans who followed the game failed to see the potential future for sports and television, as they were more worried that television would have negative effects on the attendance rates for games. On the other hand, broadcast companies such as NBC, CBS, and ABC were able to look past this, and could see the unbelievable things television could do for the game and for their companies. First off, live sports were live entertainment, meaning the cost of production for sports, and specifically baseball, was minimal. There were not sets to be made, no actors to pay, and no writers to find, the entertainment and stage was provided for them, and little needed to be done for production. Additionally, the time period did not provide much entertainment on television that targeted as specific of an audience that live baseball did. The common baseball fan tuning in to watch live games were white, upper-middle class (Bellamy 1). The target audience was a dream come true for manufacturers of products looking to sell to the specific demographic, such as shaving, alcohol, tobacco, and car companies. For example, a company like Budweiser used the three hour time frame to market their beer to baseball fans with commercials such as the one shown in figure 6, released in 1956 and aired during numerous live games. The increased interest in advertising allowed television production companies to improve their footage of live games, and increase the dollars spent towards television and film technology. James R. Walker discussed these changes in his book, Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television. The first live game featured two cameras, according to Walker, one
  • 8. Rosen 8 positioned in front of the visiting team dugout, and the other behind home plate. The fact that the field was limited to only two different angles, combined with the sunlight during most day games, made seeing the game in 1939 extremely difficult. By 1951, WCBS was televising it’s first game in color, and by 1953 major technology changes began taking place within the production of live sports. 1953 now had four, black and white cameras with fixed lenses, all located on the Mezzanine level of the stadium (see figure 7). The cameras had improved lenses and now included text-graphics on the screen and improved audio quality from the press box and around the stadium, and both created a more interactive viewing experience for fans. By 1957, a fifth camera was added to center field, and lenses now included zoom capabilities (Walker). The overall viewing experience was improved so drastically that companies continued to produce more and more live baseball. In 1955 fans saw the first televised World Series in color, and an estimated 38 million viewers watched, a staggering number compared to the 3,000 that saw the first televised game in 1939 (Walker). 1957 brought Saturday and Sunday “feature games”, and 1958 showed the first televised West Coast game. According to Baran, in 1962 ABC, NBC, and CBS committed to over $80 million spent towards sports programming, a quarter of which was committed to baseball (Baran 1). And as early as 1965, ABC was providing the country with the first ever, nation-wide broadcasts on regional basis at a consistent rate. Local television companies followed their team’s home and away schedule while national television companies would offer prime-time games, and together the two increased the popularity of the game. Not only was the technology becoming more advanced, but the television set allowed Major League baseball to take advantage of the same thing it did prior to World War II, it’s star- power. For the first time ever, highlight reels, interviews, footage of the game’s best players could be exposed to fans like never before. The best players of the decade, such as Yogi Berra,
  • 9. Rosen 9 Mickey Mantle, Harmon Killebrew, Jackie Robinson, Eddie Mathews, Hank Aaron, and Willie Mays could all now be seen from the comfort of one’s own living room, rather than the few occasional times throughout the year that a fan could go see the one iconic player on his most local team live and in person. In addition, the league was able to televise the world-famous, Major League All Star Game for the first time in 1957 (mlb.com). The television allowed Major League Baseball to market it’s game with their best assets, the stars of the time. While baseball clearly benefited from all of this, they were not the only ones. The manufacturers of television sets also saw rapidly increased sells, mentioned above with the extraordinary amount of televisions sold in the decade. The league used the television to sell baseball, while companies used baseball to sell the television. For example, this can be seen in figure 8, an advertisement for a Victor Television set featuring a baseball pitcher and a football quarterback that read, “See them on COLOR TV.” This concept can be seen again in figure 9, a second advertisement from 1950, this time for a Westinghouse television set with a headline that read, “Reserve Seats to the Ball Game for Less than the price of a Hot Dog & Pop.” Baseball was no longer just apart of the American way of life; it was now apart of the American home. Now that the game had become a closer representation to what it was prior to the war, it was time for the league to expand geographically. In 1950, the league consisted of 16 total teams, represented by only seven states, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and Michigan, as well as the Washington Senators, who played in Washington, DC (see figure 10) (baseballreference.com). Between 1900 and 1950, not a single major league franchise relocated, and the league was represented only in the Northeast and Midwest, which limited just how much the league could be considered a national entity. (Treder 1)
  • 10. Rosen 10 The difference between the 1950s and the years prior, was the advancement in air travel technology. For as long as the game had been around, teams traveled to and from games, to and from spring training, and to and from the ballpark by train. Because baseball has always had a grueling schedule that consisted of so many games in so few days, the only reasonable solution was to keep teams relatively close to each other, at least close enough to travel by train. Cost- effective air travel was slowly starting to become more popular in the early parts of the 1950s, and this concept made the dream of a Major League Baseball being represented throughout the entire country a reality. Finally, teams were able to purchase jets at an affordable cost, as O’Malley did in 1954, travel to and from ballparks by plain at an efficient rate, and could now expand to new markets, some of which were better suited for a baseball franchise than even the original cities were. Better weather, more interested fans in targeted areas, and the push westward from many Americans had baseball following the same path as the rest of the country. Before the end of the 1950s, nearly a third of the 16 original franchises relocated (Treder 1). Five additional franchises were created, and the league was the biggest and covered a wider range geographically it ever had before, including the Dodgers and Giants playing on the Pacific Coast. The 1950s became the most significant geographic realignment of a sport in our nation’s history. There is great irony in a discussion regarding baseball in this time period. A game that prides itself on tradition, pastime and the discouragement of any change, needed exactly that to survive. In 1950, 16 teams from only seven states represented Major League Baseball. By 1965, there were a total of 20 Major League Franchises that represented 13 different states, three of which played in California (baseballreference.com). Average stadium attendance rates reached as high as an estimated 17,000 fans per game in 1966, almost doubling the 9,000 fans per game that attended in 1950 (baseballreference.com). In addition, the top four teams to the lead the league in
  • 11. Rosen 11 attendance that season were four expansions or relocated teams, as the Los Angeles Dodgers, Houston Astros, New York Mets, and San Francisco Giants ranked one through four in attendance per game that season (baseballreference.com). Walter O’Malley’s decision to move the Dodgers proved to be a great one, as his team went on to lead the league in fan attendance for six consecutive years, from 1960-1966 while playing in their state of the art Dodgers Stadium. Not only did they sell the most tickets, but the Dodgers went on to win the World Series in 1959, 1963, and 1965, three out of their first nine seasons playing in Los Angeles. Their 1965 World Series win was televised lived on NBC, as Dodger legend Sandy Koufax pitched his way to a World Series Most Valuable Player Award, and the Dodgers beat the Twins in a game seven matchup with over 50,000 fans packed into Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota (baseballreference.com). An additional 50 million households were able to watch the series live from their television set at home. Most would argue that the best part of baseball is it’s tradition, it’s museum-like history, and it’s legendary tales, and most would be absolutely correct. However, the 1950s show that as times evolve, and the world around us does too, businesses and consumers living in it have to do the same. The changes that the game of baseball went through during the decade accurately represent what the rest of the country was experiencing at the same time. Whether it was baseball, the Civil Rights Movement, or the Communist Scare, the world was adapting, and those living in it were forced to do the same.
  • 12. Rosen 12 Figure 1: The Dodgers newly purchased, twin engine Convair plane Figure 2: Telegram from New York City Major Robert Wagner to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley urging him not to move the Dodgers Figure 3: Front page of the Los Angeles Times expressing the anticipation from fans waiting for the arrival of the Los Angeles Dodgers
  • 13. Rosen 13 Figure 4: President Roosevelt’s “Green Light” letter expressing his interest in keeping baseball running. Figure 5: 1946 edition of Baseball Digest, including Frank Graham’s, “Graham’s Corner Figure 6: A 1956 Budweiser commercial that often aired during live baseball games towards the end of the 1950s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zpo1uGO28aM
  • 14. Rosen 14 Figure 7: NBC broadcasting a live game from the Mezzanine level of a ballpark Figure 8: A 1950 Victor TV advertisement that reads, “See them on Color TV” Figure 9: A Westinghouse television advertisement
  • 15. Rosen 15 Figure 10: A map of the cities represented in major league baseball prior to 1950
  • 16. Rosen 16 Works Cited Access On-Line Project – TV0814. Television (1939-1957) 1950. John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History Duke University David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library Baran, Stanley. "The Museum of Broadcast Communications - Encyclopedia of Television - Sports and Television." The Museum of Broadcast Communications - Encyclopedia of Television - Sports and Television. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. "Baseball America - The Best News in Baseball." BaseballAmerica.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. "Baseball Goes To War: The National Pastime In World War II." American Veterans Center Baseball Goes To War The National Pastime In World War II Comments. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2015. "Baseball Owners Allow Dodgers and Giants to Move." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 28 May 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. "Baseball Reference." Baseball-Reference.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. Bedingfield, Gary. "Baseball in Wartime - Baseball in WWII." Baseball in Wartime - Baseball in WWII. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. Bellamy, Robert V. “Impact of the Television Marketplace on the Structure of Major League Baseball.” Journal of Broadcasting and Eloctronic Media Berkman, Dave. “Long before Arledge…Sports and TV: The Earliest Years: 1937-1947 – As seen by the Contemporary Press.” Journal of Popular Culture, Fall 1988 "Budweiser Commercial 1956." Youtube.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.
  • 17. Rosen 17 Durocher, Leo. "Los Angeles Will Love the Dodgers." The Los Angeles Times 9 May 1958: n. pag. Print. "ELIAS SPORTS BUREAU" Elias Sports Bureau. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. Erskine, Carl, and Vin Scully. Carl Erskine's Tales from the Dodger Dugout: Extra Innings. Champaign, IL: Sports Pub., 2004. Print. Macdonald, Fred. "Sports and Television." Sports and Television. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. "L.A. Greets Dodgers: 90,000 Fans Expected." The Los Angeles Times 18 Apr. 1958: n. pag. Print. Lindholm, Scott. "Major League Attendance Trends Past, Present, and Future." Beyond the Box Score. N.p., 10 Feb. 2014. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. Neal-Lunsford, J. “Sport in the Land of Television: the Use of Sport in Network Prime- Time Schedules 1946-1950.” Journal of Sport History. 1992 O’Neil, T. The Game Behind the Game: High Pressure, High Stakes in Television Sports. New York: Harper and Row, 1989 Powers, R. Supertube: The Rise of Television Sports. New York: Dial Press, 1984 Ryan, Andrea. A Brief Postwar History of U.S. Consumer Finance. N.p.: President and Fellows of Harvard College, n.d. Print. Business History Review 85. Rushin, Steve. “1954-1994: How We Got Here. Sports Illustrated, 16 August 1994 Spence, J. Up Close and Personal: The Inside Story of Network Television and Sports. New York: Free Press, 1984 Sullivan, Neil J. The Dodgers Move West. New York: Oxford UP, 1987. Print. Treder, Steve. "Dig the 1950s." The Hardball Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015.
  • 18. Rosen 18 Walker, James Robert. Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television. Lincoln. U of Nebraska. 2008. Print "Walter O'Malley : Official Website." Walter O'Malley : Official Website. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 May 2015. Weintraub, Robert. "The Amazing Story of the U.S. Military’s Integrated "World Series" in Hitler Youth Stadium in 1945." Www.slate.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 May 2015.