Radio: Baseball in Color

For its first color telecast of a baseball game, CBS unloaded its cameras last week at Ebbets Field. After watching the game (Dodgers, 8; Braves, 1) over a color receiver at CBS’ Manhattan headquarters, Herald Tribune Sport Columnist Red Smith reported:

“The reproduction was excellent, striking and only faintly phony. The Dodgers and Boston Braves all came out as spectacularly beauteous critters, except for [Dodger Catcher] Roy Campanella, who had neglected to shave. The athletes looked only a wee bit too athletic, being endowed with magnificently bronzed complexions glowing with not quite believable health.” Noting Sportcaster Red Barber’s comment on First Baseman Hodges’ rippling muscles, Critic Smith added: “You could see ’em, too, although they were encased in a pelt of somewhat lovelier tone—about the shade of roast beef medium—than Gil wears in real life.”

Technically, Smith felt there were a few flaws. “There was some slight running of colors. When [Dodger Manager] Charley Dressen . . . stood on the bare base path . . . his white uniform was immaculate as a prom queen’s gown. But the camera followed him as he returned to the coach’s box beside third, and against this background of “turf he turned green, like cheap jewelry. Light blues ran a good deal too . . . when the camera swept the shirt-sleeved crowd one had the impression that all the customers had been laundered together with too much bluing in the water . . . If you watched intently while a batsman swung in a closeup, you saw a regular rainbow of bats of varying colors. For a fraction of an instant, the moving bat became a big Japanese fan.

“Altogether, though,” Smith decided, “the colors were about as good as in Technicolor, and the view of the game was as fine as it can be through a camera, which can show only part of the action on any play.”