That was how football matches were reported on the radio in the early days of the BBC, with a squared chart of the field published in the papers, and the commentator describing how the ball moved from square to square (hence, I think, the expression “back to square one”).
Saloon keepers often kept telegraph tickers in their establishments, or at least used them occasionally to relay the progress of a live sporting event to the customers. One day in late August, 1904 a saloon keeper at 90th and Third Avenue used a ticker to call out the Jeffries-Munroe fight to his customers. One of the latter, a kindly soul, relayed this information to the forty or so kids sitting on the sidewalk outside, one of whom was Arthur “Harpo” Marx.
It’s interesting to consider the implications of this. More than I would have thought possible in the early 1900s, there must have been a long established procedure that the journalists and others followed to get the story out. Perhaps there was a telegraph operator at ringside getting the story into the system. Then that story had to be duplicated many times and sent out in real time, because it would be ridiculous to think that the Manhattan saloon keeper was the only one with a ticker. There must have been a way of broadcasting telegraphic data to many tickers all at once. I don’t know if telephone technology was equipped to do this back then; moreover, the cost of reporting the fight by phone was probably prohibitive then, given how expensive long distance calls used to be. Until long distance tolls plummeted in the last few generations, sending a telegram was always much cheaper than an long distance call.
Since telegraphs operate mechanically using electromagnets, it was fairly straight-forward to link multiple lines together and set up relays for distant coverage. Below is the Electrical World review of the setup at the 1913 Yale-Harvard football game:
Electrical Service at Harvard-Yale Football Game
Although electricity played a more prominent part in the reporting of the recent world’s series of baseball games than in the football season just closed, it was an important factor in the transmission of scores all over the country from the Harvard-Yale game in Cambridge on Nov. 22. About fifty telegraph operators with an expert knowledge of the game were stationed on top of the Harvard Stadium and connected by Western Union, Postal and American Telephone & Telegraph circuits with many of the principal cities of the East. Newspaper service hot from the gridiron was given by direct wires running as far west as Chicago, and New York, Philadelphia, Washington and other places prominent in sporting circles kept close “tabs” on the pigskin during the historic struggle for its possession. Nearly 50,000 persons attended the game, about half of whom were transported to and from the grounds by the Boston Elevated Railway, which, in addition to a large extra surface car service, ran four-car trains on a two-minute headway in the Cambridge subway for two hours before and two hours after the game. The largest number of telegraph circuits from the field were operated by the Western Union company, which had thirty wires in commission. Two operators placed in the players’ dugouts on each side of the field kept the press operators in touch with all changes in line-up. The New England Telephone & Telegraph Company operated a special talking circuit from the side lines to the Cambridge exchange, whence the scores were relayed to all offices in the Boston metropolitan district.
As you noted telephone coverage was much more limited, largely because methods for amplifying telephone transmissions to serve multiple locations barely existed. The only organized system I am aware of was the Oregon Telephone Herald’s “Special Baseball Service”, carrying local Portland games, in 1913. (Advertisement for the service in the April 14, 1913 Morning Oregonian)
Kind of a tangent: in the early 1970s, Woodward and Armstrong wrote in The Brethren, a baseball-mad justice of the U.S. Supreme Court asked his clerks to follow a big game while he was hearing oral arguments and to hand him notes on how the game was going. Initially he wanted the memos by inning… then by batter… then by pitch. Eventually one of the notes he was handed read, “Smith flies to left. Agnew resigns.”
Was “any rebroadcast, retransmission, or account of this game without the express written consent of Major League Baseball is prohibited” in effect back then?
The rights to sporting events has long been a contentious issue. Ball Magnates Do Little, Talk Much from the December 23, 1913 Morning Oregonian, reviewing the Northwestern minor league, stated “President Wattelet, of the Victoria club, brought on a heated discussion by recommending the outing of the various telephone herald and signalling systems from the ball parks, alleging that they hurt attendance. The Western Union also appeared, asking a monopoly of baseball news. Both matters were brought up to President Jones, after brief talks of 25,000 and 30,000 words by all hands around.”
In 1948 Gordon McLendon found the Liberty radio network, which primarily carried baseball games, both live and by telegraphic re-creation. Both minor and major league teams soon began to prohibit the Liberty broadcasts, on the grounds that they hurt attendance. By 1952 “only three major league teams” allowed the network to carry their games, and the network folded.
I just finished watching Deadwood, and one of the characters yells at the journalist character a few times for not including baseball scores in the paper. This would be the middle 1870s, when professional baseball was brand new. The South Dakota mining town gets a telegraph in the second season.
To what extent were national sports reported at all during this time frame (~30 years prior to 1909), especially in the West? How long would it take for the news to travel? Were telegraphs used for this purpose in that era, or was that considered frivolous or too expensive?
I feel like I have a passing familiarity with the dead ball era, but 19th century baseball is still mostly a mystery to me.
whitetho, very interesting post! Thank you.
Except the actual document exists and it says the results after “1 and a half innings”
The clerk could not get the results while IN COURT,he’d have to get to the lunch room I guess?? And he only did that somethings, not every minute.
See
http://blog.smu.edu/studentadventures/2017/political-science-in-washington/kranepool-flies-to-right-agnew-resigns/
After he left the Presidency, Ronald Reagan stopped by Wrigley Field for a Cubs game and I believe he called an inning. Afterwards, Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray said he could tell Reagan was a radio guy. He never looked at the tv monitor in the booth.
Tom Snyder’s ”Tomorrow” show in 1975 once had a broadcaster who “recreated” road games for the Detroit Tigers’s Evansville Tripletts AAA team. The man did an inning to show how he did it, taking bare information and stretching it out. What I really remember is Snyder laughing when the man said John Wockenfuss (an actual player) was batting. Tragically the broadcaster was killed in a plane crash in 1977 that killed players and coaches from the Evansville college basketball team
It was Justice Potter Stewart and the note was “Kranepool flies to right. Agnew resigns”. 1973 NLCS