Up Against the Outfield Wall
KITMAN, MARVIN
ON TELEVISION By Marvin Kitman Up Against the Outfield Wall Baseball is a great American institution, and like so many of our institutions these days it is being challenged—even on television. A...
...It can build a bridge between the people of all colors, to people of all countries...
...But he is no worse than a Phil "Holy Cow" Rizzuto or any of the other 23 shills who broadcast games in the major league cities...
...Tell me, Mick," he said to nbc's rookie find of 1969, Mickey Mantle, before the San Diego-San Francisco game, "I don't want to make you nervous...
...Fortunately, the possibilities for adding new dimensions to a baseball broadcast are limitless...
...There is a tremendous listenership to United States baseball in Cuba...
...And he then fell back on the pillow and expired...
...He asked the baseball czar why anybody would want to give up a successful corporation law practice, as he did last February, for what has become in recent years a temporary job...
...Sandy Koufax (the modern Jewish Samson), who made a name for himself as a Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher, is an example of what happens when these kids are exploited by the networks...
...In the high-pressure world of network television, Koufax has gone inside himself and become inarticulate...
...It has always seemed to me, however, that the major problem with televised baseball is not the rules, it is the sportscasters...
...It should be thrown with great force...
...We have stupendous players...
...But maybe once a month something very exciting might happen...
...Of course, Stern couldn't know Sports Illustrated (April 14) would celebrate the centenary with a shattering expose that showed the game was really invented by a New Yorker, Alexander Cart-wright...
...Tony Kubek, the ex-New York Yankee infielder and another nbc expert-in-residence, goes to the other extreme and talks too much...
...Despite the excitement of seeing stupendous players (picked up in the draft) of one of the new franchises, the San Diego Padres, lose to the San Francisco Giants, the game fit the description of the cbs radicals...
...A random sampling of the two top networks finds television asking two different types of questions about our national pastime...
...It's a dull game to watch," said George Herman...
...Perhaps this was what the President had in mind during his campaign when he said that private enterprise and government should work as a team...
...As the Great Emancipator lay dying, it was alleged, he sent for General Abner Doubleday, the sport's reputed inventor...
...Kuhn countered that the game was too short...
...nbc's basic attitude toward professional baseball is reflected in its featured Game of the Week...
...I don't see that we have a problem in this area, Woody," Kuhn replied...
...What happened out there today, Ace...
...Is there any truth to that...
...You know it's now under the armpit to the knees...
...Refusing to play ball, the reporters kept finding things wrong...
...For instance, nbc could take advantage of Sandy Koufax's connections by stationing him in the locker room for vignettes...
...This would have been the right moment for the Commissioner to send himself to the showers and call in the sport's leading metaphysician, Casey Stengel...
...But instead, George Herman and Heywood Hale Broun of cbs News, and especially Shirley Povich of the Washington Post, had the Commissioner up against the outfield wall for 30 glorious minutes...
...He sounded nervous...
...The peg for the news show was professional baseball's 100th anniversary...
...Once an innocuous bit of programming that killed Saturday afternoons, Game of the Week has already spread to Monday night several times this season...
...We have all gone out to the field with stop watches and know this rule has been consistently violated in the past...
...Permit me to intrude," Broun intruded...
...We have created a new smaller strike zone, lowered the pitching mound, and we have a 20-second rule between pitches...
...It can also build a bridge between ideologies...
...The announcer problem can be overcome...
...I jotted down the remainder of his statement because it had the sound of a potential bit of baseball lore: the "Say It Isn't So, Bowie" speech...
...More than likely, Ace Barnstable would only say something like "Well, I guess I just didn't have my stuff today, folks...
...It used to be from the shoulders to the knees...
...It has been said that you are a dedicated idiot...
...At least you will have to admit there has been a reluctance to come clean," Povich remarked sourly...
...Although he started out two years ago as a bad monologist, today he is also a poor interviewer...
...In the trying days ahead, the country will need it...
...It certainly sounded like baseball was going to be a stupendously exciting game to watch in 1969...
...But are you nervous...
...The Commissioner, after all, had been the first to reveal President Nixon's secret plan for solving the urban crisis: The poor people were to be encouraged to spend their government handouts in the ballparks for the enrichment of professional baseball's management...
...I have a dream about baseball," he began...
...If Koufax had learned the fundamentals of his new profession by working as a bar tender, a host in a bowling alley, or even as a radio disc jockey, he might have developed a style...
...Keep baseball alive," said the dying President to Doubleday...
...the Commissioner snapped at these sds-style "crazies...
...The former Yankee outfielder, making his debut before the mikes, said, "Yes...
...That in my judgment will restore the balance...
...The usual reason cited for such franchise shifts is '"the parking problem...
...Still, the morning after Bowie's appearance I searched the papers for the front-page headlines his speech should have created...
...Sending in a Shirley Povich to bat for a Curt Gowdy would go a long way to eliminate the imbalance between publicity releases and hard news, which mars these broadcasts...
...One of the few men listed in Who's Who of American Women, Povich further distinguished himself by referring to the great American institution as "a floating crap game...
...That man—the man who built the bridge between Lincoln and baseball, I mean—that man was Bill Stern...
...Suggesting that the game has a credibility gap, Broun asked the Commissioner, "Do you admit it exists...
...In fact, the owners themselves accused tv of killing the game in the late 1940s, before the millions of dollars for video rights persuaded them to change their minds...
...Baseball is im-portent in the ghetto areas...
...Well, some critics feel the game is too long," Broun said, "or that it requires a sharper rhythm, one more in keeping with the times...
...They want to use ballparks as places where the disadvantaged can cool it during the summer...
...cbs has taken a more cerebral approach, winning the race for journalistic excellence by having a team of sports lovers question the game's new commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, on Face the Nation (April 6...
...The program was presumably designed to give the Commissioner a chance to say a few nice words about his bosses, the club owners, in honor of the occasion...
...For years you fellows wouldn't even admit there was a lively ball...
...By the early 1970s, it could replace old movies as television's most significant contribution to nocturnal culture...
...I don't intend to criticize Gowdy...
...At least until I viewed the first nbc Game of the Week (April 13...
...I don't think the mounds were ever uniform before," Mick cut in nervously...
...Nor is this the only case of baseball being less than entirely candid...
...The only problem with baseball, declared the Commissioner, is that over the years an imbalance between hitting and pitching has developed...
...Kuhn paused for a moment, as if going to the rosin bag, then compared the unique opportunity and challenge of his job to the one faced earlier by "Martin King...
...Another trouble with tv sports announcing is that, as an art form, it still follows the old radio approach of straight description, relating what the eye can already see...
...Freely translated from baseball jargon, that means the stadiums are located in black neighborhoods...
...His people talk to baseball...
...We intend to enforce it this year...
...But I have heard talk before of using baseball as an instrument of social policy...
...The President is vitally concerned about baseball's summer program for the cities...
...We're in the showers with Arthur Barnstable, the rookie pitcher who was blasted off the new low mound in the first inning of his first major league game...
...This is not a speech to be tossed aside lightly, some critics will say...
...Well, if you ask me, the umpires never followed the old strike zones...
...He is a bland announcer who has no special way with a fact ("That was the third time that Lester 'Boom-Boom' Lemming scratched his armpit in the fourth inning before taking a called second strike this month, folks—a new major league record...
...What about the new strike zone, Mick...
...Tony filled the dead air with a brief rundown of everything they would be discussing...
...But the papers took the Commissioner's story as seriously as an earlier generation reacted to Bill Stern's history lessons...
...I want to register a complaint, too, about the way Game of the Week throws young kids into the announcer's box before they are ready...
...Mantle's future as a broadcaster will be as bright as Shirley Povich's if he continues to tell it like it is...
...Each umpire has his own strike zone...
...The only issue the nbc executives appear to be raising is how many more games can be put on this show...
...Baseball has already built a bridge to Canada and Japan...
...One of the inherent weaknesses in this urban-renewal plan is the tendency for major league teams to move out of the cities at the earliest possible opportunity...
...Kuhn's dream reminded me of a story about President Lincoln, first told by a famous sports-caster on nbc Radio in the 1940s...
...Ballplayers can have a meaningful dialogue with ghetto kids...
...It's a stupendous game to watch," Commisioner Kuhn argued...
Vol. 52 • May 1969 • No. 9
