Night Game

To most baseball enthusiasts a Friday game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies is about the least exciting spectacle that the major leagues can provide. Nonetheless, in Cincinnati last week 20,000 spectators--about 900% more than normal--crowded Crosley Field to examine such a contest. In the crowd were baseball dignitaries like President Ford Frick of the National League, President William Harridge of the American League. Signal for the performance to start was not the umpire's cry of "Play ball!" but another gesture, equally perfunctory but far more impressive--the pushing of a button in Washington by President Roosevelt. What made the subsequent proceedings newsworthy was that for the first time in baseball history two major-league teams played a championship game at night.

No novelty, night baseball was first tried at Fort Wayne, Ind. in 1883. In 1909, the first night game ever played on a major-league field took place on the same field as last week's, between Elks from Cincinnati and Newport, Ky. Wrote Reporter Jack Ryder in the Cincinnati Enquirer: "If the attempt is a success it is likely that every ball park in the major leagues will be equipped with lighting apparatus." In 1927, it began to look as if Ryder's premature prophecy might eventually come true, when minor leagues began to experiment seriously with night baseball. Depression encouraged the idea. By last season, 70 minor-league clubs had installed floodlights, found that night crowds equaled those on Sunday afternoons. Major-league owners have been talking night baseball since 1932. Last winter Powel Crosley, who bought the Cincinnati Reds the year before out of his radio and refrigerator profits, got permission to have his team play seven night games, one against each of the other teams in the league. He spent $62,000 installing the 363 lights on eight giant towers above the grandstand which, when the President switched them on, poured more than 1,000,000 watts down on his field last week. To spectators who had no difficulty reading scoreboards, the most startling fact about the field was that, due to the arrangement of the lights, the players cast no shadows.

Playing fast, errorless baseball, behind expert pitching by Paul Derringer who allowed only six hits, the Reds won, 2-to-1. After the game, opinion about Owner Crosley's experiment was divided between league officials, who hope night baseball may increase attendance, and their underlings, whose adverse views were sympathetically publicized by baseball reporters who shared them.

Said President Frick: "I am quite impressed ... I see no handicap to the players ... I'm not sure that the attendance is due to the novelty ... I believe we will have more of it in 1936. . . ."

Said Umpire Bill Klem: "Batters struck at more bad balls than they have in any other game I've seen this year."

Wrote Reporter Stanley Frank in the New York Evening Post: "The personalities and faces of the players were lost in the haze. . . . The game became purely mechanical and synthetic. . . ."

Said Relief Pitcher Sylvester Johnson of Philadelphia: "I missed my usual steak dinner. I know I can get it after the game but who wants to eat a big steak and then go to bed?"

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