Baseball Radio Broadcasts Brings back Childhood Memories

The first baseball radio broadcast was on August 5, 1921. The game was broadcast by KDKA of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-5. It was broadcast by Harold Arlin, KDKA's announcer. That year, KDKA and WJZ of Newark broadcast the first World Series on the radio, with Grantland Rice and Tommy Cowan calling the games for KDKA and WJZ, respectively. However, the broadcasters were not actually present at the game, but simply gave reports from a telegraph wire. The next year, WJZ broadcast the entire series, with Rice doing play-by-play. For the 1923 World Series, Rice was joined on Westinghouse for the first time by Graham McNamee.

During the 1923 World Series, Rice was the main broadcaster, but during the fourth inning of Game 3, he turned the microphone over to McNamee. This was the start of McNamee's career, and McNamee became the first color commentator. Although frequently criticized for his lack of expertise, McNamee helped popularize baseball.

1930s

Though baseball radio broadcast grew quickly as a medium for baseball, many teams were still apprehensive about it, fearing negative effects on attendance. Nevertheless, each team was allowed to reach its own policy by 1932, and the Chicago Cubs broadcast all of their games on WMAQ in 1935. The last holdouts were the New York teams—the Giants, Dodgers, and Yankees combined to block radio broadcasts of their games until 1938.

By the end of this period, radio had become increasingly commercialized. Wheaties started its long relationship with baseball radio in 1933, and in 1934, sponsorship rights to the World Series were first sold.

The Golden Age

During the Golden Age of Radio, television sports broadcasting was in its infancy, and radio was still the main form of broadcasting baseball. Many notable broadcasters, such as Red Barber, Mel Allen, Vin Scully, Russ Hodges, and Ernie Harwell, started in this period.

However, baseball radio broadcasts still did not look like the way it does today—recreations of games based on telegrams, the original means of broadcasting, were still widely used. The Liberty Broadcasting System operated solely through recreations of games, because live games were too expensive. Gordon McLendon broadcast games throughout the South from 1948 until 1952, when new blackout regulations forced him to stop. Mutual Broadcasting System also broadcast a Game of the Day during the 1950s.

Barber, nicknamed "The Ol' Redhead", was primarily identified with baseball radio broadcasts of Major League Baseball, calling play-by-play across four decades with the Cincinnati Reds (1934-38), Brooklyn Dodgers (1939-1953), and New York Yankees (1954-1966). Like his fellow sports pioneer Mel Allen, Barber also gained a niche calling college and professional football in his primary market of New York City.

Mel Allen (February 14, 1913 – June 16, 1996) was an American sportscaster, best known for his long tenure as the primary play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees. During the peak of his career in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, Allen was arguably the most prominent member of his profession, his voice familiar to millions. In his later years, he gained a second professional life as the first host of This Week in Baseball.

Vincent Edward "Vin" Scully (born November 29, 1927, in The Bronx, New York) is an American sportscaster, known primarily as the play-by-play voice of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers baseball teams. His 57-year tenure with the Dodgers (1950-) is the longest of any baseball radio broadcaster with a single club in professional sports history. Named California Sportscaster of the Year twenty-eight times, he received the Ford Frick Award from the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982, was honored with a the Life Achievement Emmy Award for sportscasting and induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995, and was named Broadcaster of the Century by the American Sportscasters Association in 2000.

Russell Patrick Hodges (June 18, 1910 – April 19, 1971) was an American broadcaster who did play-by-play for several baseball teams, most notably the New York and San Francisco Giants.

Born in Dayton, Tennessee, Hodges began his career in 1929. He was nomadic for the first two decades of his career. He worked for the Chicago Cubs, Washington Senators, and Cincinnati Reds before landing in the Bronx with the New York Yankees.

In 1949, Hodges finally found a home with the Giants. On October 3, 1951, Hodges was at the microphone for Bobby Thomson's famous Shot Heard 'Round the World. It was Hodges who cried, "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"

William Earnest "Ernie" Harwell (born January 25, 1918 in Washington, Georgia) is a former American sportscaster, known for his long career calling play-by-play of Major League Baseball games. For 55 years, 42 of them with the Detroit Tigers, Harwell called balls, strikes, and home runs on radio and television.

Roger Maris hit his 61st on October 1, 1961, in the fourth inning of the last game of the season, a sparsely attended contest between the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox in New York. Hear the late Phil Rizzuto long time New York Yankee baseball radio broadcaster make the Call!!!