On September 30, 1947, the World Series was televised for the first time.  The games between the NY Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers were only broadcast in select markets in the east – New York, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and the greater Schenectady / Albany area.  Back then there was no such thing as cable TV, so the broadcast was limited to those places that were physically connected by coaxal cable.  And even at that, in 1947 fewer than 50,000 TV sets existed in the entire country.  So most people who watched it were probably crowded around small television sets in bars. 

 

Even so, that wasn’t the first televised game.  That honour goes to a match between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers on August 26, 1939, that was only broadcast in New York.  Baseball broadcasts became more common in the ‘50s and ‘60s, especially with more people owning TVs.  For instance, the Saturday Game of the Week began in 1953.  And the playoffs and the Series were always televised.  In the ‘80s, with the rise of cable TV, it was possible to watch virtually every game of your favourite team, but only if your favourite team were Atlanta or Chicago, thanks to WGN and TBS.  Certainly there were others, but not always to a national audience.  It was in 2002 that the MLB introduced out-of-market streaming, making it possible to watch every game of the season for any team you were willing to pay to see.  And every commercial you were willing to sit through.

 

I love baseball.  But it’s become so irritating to watch it on TV.  The announcers are inane at best.  For whatever reason they never stop talking.  And what they are talking about often has nothing whatsoever to do with the game you’re trying to watch.  And then there’s the in game interviews, where the camera’s not even focused on the field.  So instead of watching baseball we’re watching two guys not talking about anything that matters.  So if something actually happens in the game you’re trying to watch, there’s a good chance they won’t even acknowledge it.   And let’s not forget the commercials!  Never mind that commercials are annoying to begin with, but if you watch you’re team a lot, which is possible with modern television, then you’re going to see the same commercials... over and over and over again.  And then yet some more.  And sometimes the commercials actually go into game time.  So when you return from the commercial there’s already an out.  And that’s not counting the little commercial-ettes they insert in the middle of the game.  Or the chyrons continuously advertising stuff on various parts of the screen.

 

So here’s my prediction.  In any given major league baseball stadium there are hundreds of cameras, a lot of which are facing the field, so it is possible to televise the game from the perspective of any given seat.  So if you wanted to, say, see the game from the perspective of sitting on the front row by third base, you could.  If you wanted to move around the ballpark during the game, you could.  It’s even possible to have monitors on your head, like eyeglasses – if that’s even necessary – that would allow you to see where the ball goes.  In other words, you are not relying on anybody to choose what you will see.  So instead of constantly having to watch just the pitcher and the batter, you can choose to watch the left fielder slightly shift to his right because he knows the batter now has two strikes and is more likely to hit it on the ground than to try to hit it deep.  Or you could focus on the runner edging off the bag, getting ready to steal.  Hell, you could watch the beer man and not pay attention to the game at all.  It is possible.  I’m sure they’d charge you for it, especially if you opted out of commercials and the commentary.  You could just listen to the sounds of the games and not have anybody go into detail about what you’ve just seen.  Are you mental?  I was there!  I suppose it would even be possible to have replays... or not.  So, yeah.  When live perspective viewing – or whatever they might call it – finally comes out, you heard it here first.

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