Night Life

Major-league baseball's electric-light bill this year will be close to $60,000. The 197 night games scheduled (106 in the American, 91 in the National) will be the most in major-league history. Reason for the increase from 156 last season is the lack of daytime customers. Fans not in the armed forces are working in war industries during the day.

The Washington Senators have the top total of 43 night dates, playing every weekday night from May 10 to the close of their home season Sept. 17. Washington was granted this special privilege because Government workers cannot get away from their jobs in the daytime. The St. Louis Cardinals and Browns will be permitted 21 night games each. All other teams equipped with lights are limited to 14 night games at home. Only major-league teams without lighting equipment are the Chicago Cubs, Boston Braves and Red Sox, New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers.

Despite statistics which prove night baseball to be a financial lifesaver, many baseball men, including Lieut. Colonel Larry MacPhail, who introduced lighting to the major leagues in Cincinnati, fear that so much of it is dangerous to postwar business. They are afraid that baseball patrons will grow to expect such backbreaking schedules as doubleheaders on Sundays and holidays and games every night in the week. Another worry is that children, less likely to attend night than day baseball, may not get so interested in the game.

Most players do not like night baseball. It disrupts their eating and sleeping. Many fans are against it because they think the action is distorted by the lights. The game, they say, looks faster than it really is. Batted balls appear, from the stands, to be traveling farther than they really do.

The lights, actually, do not bother the players. The illumination with modern equipment is so good that a man reading a newspaper on the field would find himself supplied with ten times as much light as he would get from an ordinary reading lamp. If otherwise distributed, the lamps in the clusters atop the lofty towers would light a 447-mile highway. The 615 lamps in the Brooklyn ball park, for example, furnish the equivalent of 92 million candlepower. The cost of operation is approximately the same as it would be for lighting 1,500 homes for the same length of time.

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