NIGHT BASEBALL

NIGHT BASEBALL "IS STRICTLY THE BUNK"
By Dick Meister

Here we are again playing a season of the national pastime largely at night,
yet again taking artificially lit baseball games for granted.

Even the diehards in Chicago, who had held out for a half-century, finally
accepted the idea -- or at least enough of them so that lights have been
shining for two decades now at the Wrigley Field home of the Cubs.

But just because no one has said much about it in recent years, don't think
night baseball was calmly accepted anywhere. Listen to Dan Daniel, one of
the country's top sportswriters back when most major league games were
played in sunshine.

Daniel, writing in Sport magazine in 1947, described night baseball as "a
thoroughly artificial concoction intensely repugnant to the players."

The previous year, said Daniel, the New York Yankees, the pace-setter for
all of baseball, drew 600,000 fans to the 14 games played "under the
newly-erected arc lights in Yankee Stadium ... and there was a time when the
New York club would have been glad to accept that total for its entire home
schedule of 77 games!"

The prospects for 1947 seemed even better. An early season game against the
Boston Red Sox drew 74,747 fans to the stadium -- "a new record, not only
for a night contest, but for a single game played anywhere, anytime."

Pay in that era was so low that most players, for example, had to work
full-time in the off-season, at whatever jobs they could find. Yet Daniel
encountered few players who realized that the larger crowds drawn by night
games might bring them larger salaries. Even the Red Sox manager, Joe
Cronin, insisted that night baseball was "very bad."

Night baseball "is a downright abomination," declared an "American League
star" who requested anonymity for fear that "some people might think I was
building up an alibi" for playing poorly.

"Night baseball produces living conditions and playing conditions which
definitely are detrimental to top-flight production by the players," he
added. "For me, for the rest of the ballplaying clan, competition after
dark is strictly the bunk."

Although it's highly improbable that the ballplayers of the 1940s, or of any
other period, actually talked like that, Daniel and his colleagues almost
invariably quoted them as if they did. The sentiment conveyed by the
not-quite-genuine words was genuine nonetheless.

Naturally, the owner of the Chicago Cubs, Phil Wrigley, shared the players'
distaste for night games.

"Lights," said Wrigley disdainfully, "make your ball park look like a
railroad freight yard."

But the owners of the other major league clubs couldn't resist the allure of
night baseball. Lights first went up in Cincinnati, in l935. By l948, when
the Detroit Tigers finally illuminated their stadium, every team save the
Cubs had installed them.

Although the enticements did not include the television revenue that
accounts for today's heavy schedule of night games, there was plenty of
other extra money to tempt an owner. Night play enabled him "to draw Sunday
doubleheader crowds on weekdays, sell his higher-priced seats almost in toto
as a regular thing, pick up a tidy sum through a richly-patronized
commissary, and cater to fans who otherwise would not be able to attend his
games."

But the fans, why were they so attracted to the "artificial concoction"?

"Night ball is more exciting .... Pitchers who can't throw hard enough to
knock your hat off look like [Bob] Feller under the arcs. Infield play has a
lightning quality...All baseballs under the arcs look like aspirin tablets.
All double plays are marvels of speed.... Your attention is focused on the
play."

Daniel, no less a sexist than most other journalists of the day, added that
"in the sunshine, your gaze will wander. You may be intrigued by the redhead
sitting near the Yankee dugout, or the blonde who seems to know the star of
the visiting club."

But though they might be less distracting, there were even more redheads and
blondes - -and brunettes -- at night games. Most, said Daniel, were in the
company of husbands or boyfriends.

"Taking your gal to the game entails certain responsibilities in
entertainment," he added, "and the more lavish the consumption of chow, the
richer the club gets."

Daniel concluded that " since the arcs bring out so great a percentage of
the gals, night ball produces more rooting, more shouting, more screeching.
A foul ball will turn the park into a Bedlam."

That's it, the great lesson even the Chicago Cubs finally learned: "More
shouting, greater thirst, more drink sales ... the gorgeous cycle of the
arcs."

Copyright © Dick Meister

Story ID:	1972
Written by:	Dick Meister (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	several cities USA
Year:	2007