Courtesy Palm Beach Post

(August 31, 2009) Long before Joe Garagiola and Tony Kubek did the Saturday Game of the Week, before Curt Gowdy welcomed you to Monday Night Baseball, before Baseball Tonight started counting down its Web Gems, there was an advertisement in the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper.

"See Big League Baseball for the First time by Television at any RCA Victor Television Dealer's Store."

Two days later, on Aug. 26, 1939, a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers was aired live from Ebbets Field. There were an estimated 400 television sets in the New York area, a far cry from the 33,535 people at the ballpark that day.

"The screen was full of snow and the players were silhouettes," Reds outfielder Harry Craft later said, describing the picture quality on a television that RCA donated to Ebbets Field as a token of thanks for the pioneering broadcast.

"We recognized them by their mannerisms, batting stance, swing, running, fielding and throwing. We wondered if they would ever, ever be able to clear up the picture and see all the action on the field."

Fast-forward 70 years, and it's hard not to turn on a baseball game without high-definition close ups of the sweat beads on Albert Pujols' face in the batter's box or the spin on Tim Lincecum's curveball, not to mention the barrage of instant replays showing every angle of Derek Jeter's great throw from the hole.

It all started 70 years ago last Wednesday, an anniversary that went virtually unnoticed across Major League Baseball.

"Maybe 70 isn't a magical number or maybe it's just because (television) is so much a part of the game now that it's hard for people to imagine when it didn't exist," said James Walker, a professor at St. Xavier University in Chicago who has studied that first game for his book Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television.

The first televised baseball game, according to reports, actually happened on May 17, 1939, when Princeton beat Columbia 2-1 at Columbia's Baker Field in New York City. That served as a dress rehearsal that helped RCA work out potential kinks three months later at Ebbetts Field.

There were two cameras - one at field level to the left of home plate and the other in the upper deck above third base. Calling the action was Red Barber, who had no benefit of a monitor and had to guess based on which camera light was on and where it was pointed.

At the time, baseball had been a radio staple since 1921. So just about every radio broadcaster, including Barber, harbored some resentment toward the new technology.

"There was some resistance because when you're the radio announcer, you are the game. They were in total control of that game, they really brought it alive. Their judgement was the final interface between the game and the fan," Walker said.

"Television took all of that power away from them - the fans could see it. They could say it was a hard-hit ball to short, but the fan judged whether it was a hard-hit ball to short - they saw it."

"Certainly the baseball (radio) announcer is a master craftsman when it comes to telling the story, but the simple reality is when people are given a choice of between listening to a baseball game on radio and on television, the eyeballs win."

Today, a television broadcast includes a team of personnel all working together in concert. Fox Sports Net Florida will offer a behind-the-scenes look at a baseball broadcast on its Inside the Marlins segment at 10 p.m. Wednesday night.

"Baseball on television is a team sport," said Marlins TV broadcaster Rich Waltz, who counts among his television heros longtime network producer Rick LaCivita and director Joe Aceti.

"As an announcer, you're part of a team that includes the producer, the director, the analyst, the tape room, the audio room. If one part of that breaks down, it can all fall apart.

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