"Live" Baseball, 1920s style
Baseball is great in person, great on television, and in my humble opinion, especially great through the cracking and popping of an AM radio station. But for many fans of the game in the 1910s-1930s, the next best thing to going to a game was "watching" a game on a Playograph, seen below. |
| Playograph in use in Muncie, Indiana - 1923 Digital Media Collection, Ball State University |
Typically proudly displayed and operated near city squares, often outside movie theaters or newspaper offices, Playographs drew fans in droves. On big game days, crowds blocked city sidewalks in their attempts to keep up with "live" game action on the magical board, an over-sized visual aid that not only showed the score and the line-up, but actually simulated each pitch through a series of lights and symbols. The board was put into motion by two Playograph operators as they received updates of each play via telegraph.
Think of the Playograph as an analog version of MLB's current "Gameday" visual:
More archival photos of the Playograph
Playograph on display at Raleigh News and Observer Office - North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill (via student project site)
Crowd watching Playograph during the 1911 World Series - Library of Congress via Flickr
1912 description of the Playograph
Description of the Playograph - Yale Scientific Monthly, 1912
