World Series on the Sly

Click for outside article on Herb Score

by Marty Roselius

In America, baseball, football and basketball held the attention of sports fans during the 1950s. These three major sports had highly recognized professional leagues and were the primary activities high schools of the area competed in almost to the exclusion of others. 

I followed the professional teams and their star players through my collection of sports cards. In Key West, being a few states and more than a thousand miles removed from the nearest major league city, there were no radio broadcasts of games, although a few would be telecast nationwide on the weekend by one of the three networks. Without a prized television standing in the corner of our family’s living room, my exposure to professional sports was minimal. Nevertheless, I always found a way to stay on top of who was leading the division, how the hated Yankees were doing (they always won), and how my favorite players were faring. 

In 1948 there were only 190,000 TV sets in all of America, but with sports becoming a major portion of television programming during this period, it quickly grew to 10.5 million sets two years later. Radio broadcasts were quite popular as most families had radios, whereas many could not afford a television in the days before the common use of credit cards.

In the major leagues there were only sixteen teams, all concentrated in cities in the northeast and Midwest. There was no team west of St. Louis until the Giants moved to San Francisco in 1958, or south of Washington, D.C. until the Braves moved to Atlanta in 1966. But there were still two leagues, The American League and The National League. And the World Series pitted the two best teams of the year, the two champions, against each other for the World Championship.

Start times were a little different too. Ballgames were played during the middle of the day, regardless whether the game was the first of the season or the seventh game of the World Series. Television and radio networks broadcast the games live, during daylight hours, as they were traditionally played. 

So for us school kids, this presented a major league dilemma. The World Series is on the radio. And heck, we’re sitting behind a school desk! That left us with only one alternative. Sneak our transistor radios into class, beneath the watchful eyes of our most unsympathetic teachers. However, some genius inventor acknowledged our dour predicament and developed an amazing invention that made this possible—an earpiece that allowed us to listen to the radio without any audible sound that could be detected by a teacher. With great skill we carefully concealed the small earpiece, feeding the thin wire down our shirt collar to the transistor radio hidden in our pockets. Resting our elbow on the desk, we leaned our head against the open palm of our hand to cover it. 

Willie Mays famous over the shoulder

1954 World Series catch

This deception created a difficult challenge: following the action of the game while not making sudden and compromising sounds, gestures or facial expressions during the excitement of play. Our teachers were aware of the conflict their classroom priorities had with the broadcast of the World Series and were ever watchful for the telltale signs of a distracted student. These World Series games were made even more exciting since we had to follow them discreetly, with the threat of a paddling and the loss of our prized electronics in the midst of the most exciting sports event of the year, if we got caught. But, holy sneakers, we just couldn’t miss the game, at any risk.

I didn’t, get caught that is, and enjoyed the excitement of many a Mickey Mantle home run or a famous Willie Mays’ over-the-shoulder catch from center field while Mrs. Wagner or Mrs. Haskins dutifully carried on their teaching responsibilities with a history lesson from the front of the class. I don’t remember those history lessons, but I do remember those World Series’, which in fact, are history lessons in themselves, aren’t they?