April 18, 1939: Red Barber graces the airwaves in first Brooklyn Dodgers radio broadcast

Walter “Red” Barber was one of the pioneers of radio and television broadcasting in baseball. Among the firsts in his career was serving as the announcer for the first Brooklyn Dodgers radio broadcast, on April 18, 1939, when the Dodgers hosted the New York Giants at Ebbets Field to open the 1939 season.

By 1938, radio broadcasts of baseball games had become common in National and American League cities – except for New York, home of the Dodgers, Giants, and New York Yankees. Yankees general manager Ed Barrow and Giants owner Charles Stoneham were strongly opposed to broadcasts in New York City for fear they would hurt attendance at their ballparks. The Dodgers went along with their counterparts, leading in 1934 to a mutual agreement to a five-year ban on radio broadcasts.1

This changed after Larry MacPhail, who had been general manager of the Cincinnati Reds from 1934 to 1936, landed an executive job with the Dodgers for the 1938 season. He introduced a number of changes in the Dodgers organization during his first season – bringing night baseball and other upgrades to Ebbets Field, outfitting the team in blue and white uniforms, and spending $45,000 to acquire a solid first baseman, Dolph Camilli, from the Philadelphia Phillies.2

MacPhail’s next step was to bring Dodgers games to the radio. In Cincinnati, he was convinced that radio broadcasting of Reds games was good business for the club. In 1934 MacPhail began his association with Barber, who worked for Powel Crosley Jr., owner of radio station WLW and the Reds franchise. The first Reds game Barber announced was the first time he had ever seen a big-league team play.3 Among his distinctions was broadcasting the first night game in the majors, played at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field in 1935.4

When MacPhail joined the Dodgers, he ended their participation in the radio ban. He knew Barber was the person he wanted to embark on his new course in Brooklyn, starting with the 1939 season. He persuaded Barber to leave Cincinnati to become the Dodgers’ first radio broadcaster on 50,000-watt station WOR, with broadcasts sponsored by General Mills, Socony-Vacuum, and Procter & Gamble. (The Yankees and Giants quickly followed suit and began broadcasting home games of their own, with the same three sponsors, by the beginning of the 1939 season.5)

The Dodgers under manager Burleigh Grimes finished the 1938 season mired in seventh place. Another major change MacPhail implemented in 1939 was replacing Grimes with 32-year-old Leo Durocher, who had joined Brooklyn in an October 1937 trade with the St. Louis Cardinals. In his second year with the Dodgers, Durocher added managerial duties to his job as the regular shortstop.

The Dodgers had a successful spring training, cultivating the fans’ hopes that the team could finish in the first division for the first time since 1932.6 Camilli, Ernie Koy, Babe Phelps, Goody Rosen, and Cookie Lavagetto were the best of the returnees from the previous season. There was disappointment when 20-year-old outfield prospect Pete Reiser was sent down to the minors after an impressive spring showing.7

Durocher went with right-hander Russ “Red” Evans as his starter for the Opening Day game. It was a last-minute switch from veteran Luke Hamlin. Hamlin was the logical choice, having been their number-one starter the previous season.

The 32-year-old Evans, whose previous major-league experience was 17 appearances with the Chicago White Sox in 1936, was a newcomer to the Dodgers. He had won 21 games for New Orleans of the Southern Association in 1938 and was selected by the Dodgers from the Giants in the 1938 Rule 5 draft.8 Sportswriter Lee Scott of the Brooklyn Citizen surmised that Durocher and MacPhail schemed to defeat the Giants with one of their former players.9

Giants manager Bill Terry countered with 29-year-old righty Harry Gumbert, who led the Giants with 15 wins in 1938. Gumbert had defeated Hamlin in the Dodgers’ 1938 season opener, which may have contributed to Durocher’s instinct about starting Evans instead of Hamlin.

On a day in which rain was predicted, a capacity crowd was expected to attend the Dodgers’ traditional season opener against the Giants. New York newspapers heralded the 1939 season as baseball’s centennial, based on the contemporary belief that Abner Doubleday had invented the game in 1839.10

Having previously broadcast live games for the Reds, Barber was well-prepared for his first game in the radio booth with the Dodgers. What he couldn’t have expected was that a photographer, who was in the booth to capture the historic moment, dropped a flashbulb to the floor. When it shattered, pieces of glass landed in Barber’s mouth. Al Helfer, Barber’s broadcast partner, had to do the broadcast while the fragments of glass were carefully removed. Barber didn’t suffer any cuts and was able to return to the microphone.11

Both teams scored in the second inning. In the top of the third, after a single by Jo-Jo Moore and Mel Ott’s double, Zeke Bonura slammed a home run 10 rows into the lower left-field stands to put the Giants ahead, 4-1. Bonura had joined the Giants over the winter in a trade with the Washington Senators.

The Giants added two runs in the fifth. Frank Demaree’s single scored Ott, and an error by shortstop Durocher – his second of the game – allowed Harry Danning to score from second base.

With reliever Ira Hutchinson in the game in the top of the sixth, Moore singled to score Burgess Whitehead, who had doubled, making the score 7-1.

Camilli led off the bottom of the seventh with a home run off Gumbert. Terry stayed with Gumbert, who finished the game. He allowed a third run in the bottom of the ninth, when Lavagetto’s single scored Phelps, who had doubled. The final score was 7-3.

Bonura was the Giants’ hitting star. In addition to his homer, he singled twice and walked. Often criticized for his fielding, the hulking first baseman recorded 14 putouts and 2 assists.

Evans’ performance was disappointing in Durocher’s first major decision as manager. He took the loss, giving up six runs (four earned) on eight hits and three walks. He ended 1939 with a 1-8 record, in what was his last major-league season.

Gumbert pitched a complete game, yielding three runs on nine hits and two walks. He led the Giants with 18 wins in 1939.

On August 26, 1939, Barber recorded another first in broadcasting. NBC televised the first game of a doubleheader between the Dodgers and Reds at Ebbets Field, the first telecast of a major-league game. Barber handled the announcing sitting among the fans, from a box in the upper deck in back of third base.12

Barber was acknowledged for his contributions to radio broadcasting in 1939 by winning an award sponsored by The Sporting News for outstanding baseball announcing. He was selected over Frankie Frisch, who announced games for the Red Sox and Braves in Boston, and Chicago Cubs announcer Bob Elson.13

The Sporting News attributed Barber’s popularity to “his knowledge of inside baseball, accurate figures he has at his finger tips and the intimate details of the players’ lives and characteristics he has at the end of his tongue, ready to reel off at any lull in the game; also because of his factual descriptions of the game, without any artificial hysteria or second-guessing of manager, umpires and players and lastly, but not the least, because of his excellent delivery and wide vocabulary.” Barber’s style over the airwaves was believed to be partially responsible for the Dodgers attracting 955,000 fans to Ebbets Field in 1939.14

He was involved in the first televised World Series game in 1948, and when the first full World Series was televised in 1952, he was in on that, too.15 On April 15, 1947, Barber was at the microphone on WOR when Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier in the Dodgers-Boston Braves season opener, an assignment that Barber described, with pride, as the “hottest microphone any announcer ever had to face.”16

In 1978 Barber and Mel Allen – who began broadcasting Yankees and Giants games a season after Barber started with the Dodgers – were the first two recipients of the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for excellence in baseball broadcasting.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Bruce Slutsky and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org for information including the box score and play-by-play.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BRO/BRO193904180.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1939/B04180BRO1939.htm

Notes

1 Red Barber, The Broadcasters (New York: The Dial Press,1970), 128.

2 Steven Treder, Forty Years a Giant: The Life of Horace Stoneham (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2021), 77-80.

3 “Hear One, Hear All! Barber of WOR,” The Sporting News, December 14, 1939: 8.

4 Judith Hiltner and James Walker, Red Barber: The Life and Legacy of a Broadcasting Career (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2022), 120.

5 Treder, 83.

6 “Dodgers Open Today – Maybe,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 18, 1939: 11.

7 “Reiser May Be Ready in Year,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 19, 1939: 16.

8 Tommy Holmes, “Dodgers’ Opening Wrecked by Wrong Hunch,” Brooklyn Eagle, April 19, 1939: 16.

9 Lee Scott, “Strategy of Brooklyn ‘Brain Trust’ Backfires as Dodgers Blow Opening Game,” Brooklyn Citizen, April 19, 1939: 6.

10“Dodgers Open Today – Maybe.”

11 Hiltner and Walker, 140.

12 Red Barber and Robert Creamer, Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1968), 56.

13 Edgar Brands, “Red Barber of Station WOR, N.Y., Wins Outstanding Baseball Announcer Award for Work in Brooklyn,” The Sporting News, December 7, 1939: 7.

14 Brands.

15 Barber and Creamer, 286.

16 Red Barber, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball (New York: Doubleday: 1982), ix.