Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television (review)

The intertwined history of baseball and television, as with the history of television and its relationship with all major sports, is a story of the effect of technology, the impact of money, and the growth of a significant sports sub-culture in America. Add to that the crucial decisions of business and sports leaders who are driven by human foibles, fears, vision, and greed. In this ambitious study of the baseball/television relationship in the last half-century, Rob Bellamy and James Walker have managed to illuminate much of that intertwined history.

The work is divided into four sections each encompassing broad themes. Each section consists of chapters whose reasons for being together are not always obvious, but generally justifiable. At times the organizational structure produces redundancies, while at other times the reader is referred back to a previous chapter or forward to another chapter for further information. This can be both awkward and disconcerting.

The first section chronicles the experimental and early years of television technology, televised baseball, and the first attempts by individual owners to develop a coherent TV policy. The second section is an eclectic package dealing with the World Series, the Game of the Week, the development of a national television package, the rise of Cable, and the growth of pay television including the regional sports networks.

The third section details baseball's schizophrenic posture towards television both as threat and savior. Baseball people blamed television for various ills of the game, while simultaneously seeing television as a potential source of new revenues. One chapter examines the interaction of baseball with the Law and with Congress and another with baseball coming to terms with TV and seeking to exploit it.

The final section offers a very informative examination of the role of the announcer and the producer in televised baseball. There is an interesting comparison of announcers on radio and on television, and a look at the interaction of technology and production techniques in telecasting the game.

Bellamy and Walker offer a cogent and sophisticated analysis of the consequences of television for baseball, both positive and negative. Their work contains much new information and synthesizes the old with the new in meaningful ways. They have a very good eye for the consequences of change for the internal operations of the game, as well as the impact on baseball's fan base. Their understanding of the fears generated by this new technology allows them to highlight missed opportunities resulting from short-sighted leadership. They point out the utter failure of baseball owners and executives to grasp either the principles of marketing and/or the marketing potential inherent in the new technology.

The fact that the book is co-authored makes for an uneven quality in the writing, and that can be disconcerting. The unevenness may also be due to the fact that some chapters read more like discreet conference presentations or journal articles than part of a comprehensive study or themed monograph.

That having been said Center Field Shot is a must for anyone interested in the impact of television on American culture, and on baseball, an American sporting institution that once carried the designation of National Pastime.