April 23, 1948: Mickey Harris blanks Yankees in first television broadcast of a Boston Red Sox game

Some of the first televised images of the Boston Red Sox were displayed early in April 1948 at the First Annual Electric Show at Mechanics Hall in downtown Boston. The Boston Globe announced that “Moving pictures of the Red Sox and Braves in action will be micro-waved by WBZ-TV from the [Hotel] Bradford, and picked up by some 80 television sets at the Electric Show…The baseball movies will go on each day at 4 and 7:30.”1

More than 10,000 people came to the show the first day, some to see the spring training camp pictures of Boston’s two major-league baseball teams.2 Films had been taken in Florida and then transmitted from the Hotel Bradford to the Philco Television exhibit at the show.

It was nine years after the first televised major-league game between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Cincinnati Reds in 1939, and the winds of change were stirring in Boston. Before a City Series exhibition game between the Braves and Red Sox, a 19-6 win for the Red Sox at Braves Field on April 16, there was a “luncheon pow-wow” with owners Tom Yawkey and Lou Perini of the Red Sox and Braves, respectively, as well as GMs Joe Cronin and John Quinn, to discuss whether “the Boston clubs shall adopt television later in the year,” the Globe reported. “No decision was reached; but there’ll be another sit-down soon.”3

The April 19 Boston Traveler featured an article in which Yawkey said, “Last season in Detroit, I saw telecasts of Tigers-Red Sox games in the office of W.O. Briggs.” The Tigers’ owner had allowed a dozen or so games to be “sent out over the television stations.” So had Chicago Cubs owner Phil Wrigley. Yawkey said the Detroit club had been offered money for the privilege of permitting broadcasts but had refused since there was no way yet to assess what public reaction might be if it became something offered on other than an experimental basis.4

Trying to set a fair price for broadcast rights was something to be determined. Not many people had home sets yet but “every tavern worth its weight in jiggers is set up to get the first picture.”5

The Red Sox opened at home against the Philadelphia Athletics and lost all three games. They traveled to Yankee Stadium, where they played on Friday, April 23.

As it happened, this was the first-ever televised Red Sox game, albeit to a limited audience. Watching the game at Boston’s Parker House hotel were Tom and Jean Yawkey and Cronin, as well as “several hundred” others.6 WBZ-TV was not officially on the air yet, nor would it be until June, when it became New England’s first commercial television station. These were experimental transmissions.7

Pregame ceremonies included the raising of the Yankees’ 1947 world championship banner, Joe DiMaggio being presented his 1947 American League Most Valuable Player award, and New York Governor Thomas Dewey throwing out the first pitch.8

Right-hander Spec Shea started on the mound for the Bucky Harris-managed Yankees; he had led the AL in winning percentage in 1947, going 14-5 with a 3.07 earned run average. Opposing Shea was left-hander Mickey Harris for the Red Sox, led by Joe McCarthy in his first season managing Boston. McCarthy had skippered the Yankees from 1931 through 1946.

The Red Sox scored the game’s first run in the top of the third. Shea created his own trouble by walking the first two batters, Harris and center fielder Dom DiMaggio. Third baseman Johnny Pesky flied out to center, but left fielder Ted Williams singled to right-center; Harris scored when Joe DiMaggio bobbled the ball for an error.9

Back on the mound, Harris retired the Yankees in order in the bottom of the inning, and Boston added a run in the fourth. Second baseman Bobby Doerr singled to left. He took second on an infield grounder by right fielder Sam Mele. Catcher Birdie Tebbetts then singled to left, scoring Doerr.10

The Red Sox added two more runs in fifth. With one out, Williams hit a solo home run over the 340-foot mark to “the lower right-field seats.”11 It was the 29-year-old Williams’ first homer of the season and 198th of his career.

First baseman Stan Spence hit a ball that, according to the Associated Press, a “lady in a red hat reached out of a box and touched” – thus a ground-rule double on fan interference.12 Billy Johnson “booted” a ball at third base, hit by shortstop Vern Stephens, who reached first while Spence took third.13 Doerr hit a fly ball to center, and Spence tagged and scored. Boston had a 4-0 lead.

Meanwhile, Harris diffused the Yankees’ biggest threats of the game in the fourth and fifth innings. Left fielder Johnny Lindell walked to lead off the fourth, Joe DiMaggio singled, and a groundout by first baseman Steve “Bud” Souchock put runners on second and third with one out.  An intentional walk to Billy Johnson loaded the bases, but Stephens turned shortstop Phil Rizzuto’s grounder into a 6-4-3 double play.

In the fifth, the Yankees again loaded the bases, with two outs, but Joe DiMaggio popped up to Pesky at third base. The Globe said the star of the game was really Harris’s clutch pitching.14

Harris settled down as the only Yankee to reach base in the final four innings was Lindell with a two-base hit to left field in the bottom of the eighth. He walked four in his nine innings and gave up five hits.

The Yankees left eight on base in the game. The Red Sox stranded 11. Ted Williams had three of Boston’s seven hits.

Back in Boston, the Braves had their first home game on April 23. They’d lost two of their first three to the Phillies in Philadelphia,15 and they lost the home opener to the New York Giants, 3-1, before 11,553 fans.

The Globe highlighted the contrast in viewing experiences. At Braves Field, “11,000 chilled fans” had watched the Braves’ “unrewarding home debut” while the “several hundred spectators” had been “seated very comfortably in a room at the Parker House” watching the Red Sox and Yankees.16

The paper noted of the television broadcast, “The reception was very clear, and the spectators were able to follow the flight of the ball and the progress of the game, with a running commentary, very easily.”17 The game was sent to Boston by station WABD in New York and was sponsored by the Atlantic Television Corporation. During the seventh-inning stretch, Joe Cronin stood up and quipped, “Where’s the peanuts?”18

On May 11, two television cameras were installed at Fenway Park by WBZ-TV to practice shooting a baseball game, though not for public broadcast.19 June 9 was the day television itself was to first be launched in Boston and the first station – WBZ-TV – was to begin operations at 6:15 PM. that day.20 There were perhaps 3,500 sets in homes in the Greater Boston area, thought to be about half in private homes and half in amusement spots.21

The first televised baseball game from Boston finally came to pass on June 15, as the Braves beat the Chicago Cubs, 6-3, with numerous sportswriters covering the game from local taverns.22 The broadcasters were Jim Britt and Tom Hussey. Former major leaguer Bump Hadley was the sports director for WBZ. He was color commentator between innings.23

A considerable amount of detail regarding the positioning of cameras in the ballparks, how the camera operators would communicate with the announcers and the rest of the crew, what the power of the different lenses were, and which camera would cover what portion of the action was presented in the June 6 Boston Herald.24

The Red Sox returned to Boston from a lengthy road trip on July 2. That was the date of the first telecast of a Red Sox home game.25

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Carl Riechers and copy-edited by Mike Eisenbath.

Photo credit: Mickey Harris, Trading Card Database.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also consulted Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org. Thanks to Donna L. Halper for reading the first draft of this article.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYA/NYA194804230.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1948/B04230NYA1948.htm

Notes

1 Harold Kaese, “Harvard Oarsmen Get First Time Trial in Basin Tomorrow,” Boston Globe, April 2, 1948: 37. The Electric Show also featured “shiny new refrigerators, stoves, ironers, water heaters, automatic washing machines, and smaller electronic equipment.” Albert D. Hughes, “Television Sets by Scores Feature Electric Exhibit,” Christian Science Monitor, April 3, 1948: 2.

2 “10,000 See Game By Television from Electric Show,” Boston Herald, April 5, 1948: 22. One of the other features of the show was a “Walking, Talking Refrigerator.”

3 Melville Webb, “Sox Impartial, Hammer Each Tribal Pitcher,” Boston Globe, April 17, 1948: 2.

4 Yawkey said the televised action seemed “too limited in its scope” to capture all the drama and action, but acknowledged shooting from more “lofty” positions would help. He said he had happened by a restaurant in New York that was showing a Dodgers/Cardinals game at Ebbets Field to a sizable crowd, that he’d stood on tiptoe to get a good look, and that he’d later purchased newspapers to understand what was behind some of the action he had seen. George C. Carens, “Televised Baseball Headed for Hub,” Boston Traveler, April 19, 1948: 25. 

5 Pres Hobson, “Telecast Race is On!,” Quincy (Massachusetts) Patriot Ledger, April 21, 1948: 10. Two years of experimental broadcasts in New York was said to have increased interest at the ballparks, not diminished it. Yawkey said that was the same as it had been with radio. It wasn’t long before the minor leagues began to realize the threat that television might present. See Associated Press, “Minor Leagues Gird to Fight Invasion by Television,” Boston Globe, May 21, 1948: 36.

6 “Several Hundred Fans See Sox Beat Yanks in Parker House,” Boston Globe, April 24, 1948: 2.

7 WBZ-TV first broadcast on June 9 and WNAC-TV followed 12 days later, on June 21.

8 Two months later, in June 1948, Dewey received the Republican nomination for president. He lost the general election to President Harry S Truman that November.

9 John Drebinger, “44,619 see Boston Halt Bombers, 4-0,” New York Times, April 24, 1948: 18. Drebinger also used the word “fumbled” and said the run would not otherwise have scored.

10 A couple of months later, Birdie Tebbetts’ mother got to see him play ball on what became known as “TV.” She was able to see the first Red Sox game ever televised from Fenway Park. On July 2, the Lowell Sun noted in the next day’s newspaper, “Mom Tebbetts (Birdie’s mother) got her first glimpse of her son in action via television…She didn’t make the trip down from Nashua, N.H., but she did sit in on a telecast of the game and got a big kick out of it.” Frank Sargent, “The Lookout,” Lowell Sun, July 3, 1948: 6. 

11 Jack Hand, Associated Press, “Bosox Blank Yanks, 4-0; Ted Homers,” Washington Post, April 24, 1948: 12. See also Jack Barry, “Sox Win First, Harris Blanks Yanks; Ted Homers Off Shea in 4-0 Triumph,” Boston Globe, April 24, 1948: 2. The ball just barely went out, Barry writing that right fielder Tommy Henrich “all but dismembered himself jumping and half-falling to the stands trying to reach the drive.”

12 Hand.

13 Drebinger. The Globe’s Barry suggesting that assigning an error to Johnson was unfair, calling Stephens’ drive a “wicked grounder.” 

14 Barry.

15 The Giants swept all four games at Braves Field, giving the Braves a 1-6 start. By mid-June they had claimed first place and only once – after the games of August 30 – did they drop out of first.

16 “Several Hundred Fans See Sox Beat Yanks in Parker House.”

17 “Several Hundred Fans See Sox Beat Yanks in Parker House.”

18 Bob Dunbar, Boston Herald, April 24, 1948: 10.

19 Harold Kaese, “Braves Field Game Last Week in May Opens Television Here,” Boston Globe, May 12, 1948: 23. See also “Braves, Sox Television Starts About June 1st,” Boston Herald, June 12, 1948: 12. Both WBZ and WNAC planned to broadcast games, sharing Boston dates between them. United Press, “Braves-Brooklyn Title May Be First Telecast,” Patriot Ledger, May 12, 1948: 8. The plan was to alternate games. Furthermore, “The officials of both the Braves and the Red Sox have agreed to hand over their television rights to these two stations without charge in the hope of speeding up the development of television in this section. The two sponsors of the radio broadcasts, the Narragansett Brewing Company and the Atlantic Refining Company, will bankroll the televising of the games. WHDH, which held the contractual rights for the 1948 telecasts, consented to the televising of the games by the two stations which are ready to provide video service this year.” Arthur Sampson, “First Boston Baseball Telecast Scheduled for 8:15 Tonight,” Boston Herald, June 15, 1948: 1, 15.  

20 Edward Fitzpatrick, “WBZ-TV Debut Scheduled Tonight,” Boston Post, June 9, 1948: 1,

21 Clif Keane, “Braves-Cubs Game to be Televised Tonight,” Boston Globe, June 15, 1948: 9. 

22 “Braves Game First Seen Here by Television,” Boston Globe, June 16, 1948: 1, 7. For a full account of both the game and the television broadcast, see Donna L. Halper, “June 15, 1948: Televised baseball debuts in Boston,” SABR Games Project, SABR.org, https://sabr.org/gamesproj/game/june-15-1948-televised-baseball-debuts-in-boston/. Accessed March 2026.

23 Michael Vatousiou, “Television of Baseball Takes A Complex System,” Boston Herald, June 6, 1948: 1, 10.

24 See Vatousiou. Another very detailed look was presented by Elizabeth Sullivan, “Telecasters Don’t Look at Diamond When Describing Ball Game,” Boston Globe, July 11, 1948: A18.

25 The Athletics beat the Red Sox, 4-2, in a game broadcast by WBZ-TV. The 1948 Red Sox went on to finish second in the AL, losing a tiebreaker game to the Cleveland Indians on October 4. The Indians then beat the Braves – winners of their first NL pennant since 1914 – in the World Series.