The First Televised Major League Baseball Game

On August 26, 1939, the first major league baseball game was broadcast on television. Station W2XBS, which would later become WNBC-TV, carried a doubleheader between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Announcer Red Barber called the action, describing each play for a tiny audience watching on roughly 400 television sets scattered across the New York metropolitan area.

The broadcast used just two cameras. One sat behind home plate, and the other was positioned along the third-base line near the visitors' dugout. The technology was primitive. Barber lost his communication link with the director at one point and had to guess which camera feed the viewers were watching. Players appeared as grainy figures moving across a small screen, barely distinguishable from the field behind them.

Between innings, Barber performed the first televised in-game commercials. He poured cream and sugar into a bowl of Wheaties and added banana slices, demonstrating breakfast preparation for the viewing audience. He also advertised Ivory soap and Mobil Oil, wearing a gas station attendant's cap for the latter. The marriage of baseball and advertising on television began that afternoon, a partnership that would eventually generate billions of dollars.

The Reds won the first game 5-2, and the Dodgers took the second 6-1. The quality of play barely registered against the novelty of the medium. The 1939 World's Fair was underway in New York, and television was one of its prize exhibits. Organizers saw the Dodgers-Reds doubleheader as the perfect showcase for the new technology.

Few could have imagined what would follow. Within two decades, television would transform baseball's economics, reshape franchise values, and change how Americans experienced the sport. The grainy broadcast from Ebbets Field on August 26, 1939, was the first frame of a revolution that Barber narrated with a bowl of cereal at his side.