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Night baseball to begin in 1909 ?...
Night baseball to begin in 1909 ?...
Item # 676133
June 24, 1909
EVENING TRIBUNE, San Diego, June 24, 1909
* MLB night baseball to begin in 1909 ?
The top of page 2 has a two column heading: "NIGHT BASEBALL IS NO A POSSIBILITY" with subheads and two related photos. (see) Surprisingly this issue is in good condition being from the "wood pulp" era. Very hard to find issues that are not totally fragile from this era in paper.
Complete with 8 pages, small library stamps within the masthead, some small binding holes along the spine, small tape mend within masthead, generally nice.
source: Cincinnati Magazine: With a now legendary click, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt tapped a telegraph key at the White House at precisely 8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 24, 1935. Approximately 500 miles to the west, the signal lit a lamp near first base at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field. On that cue, Reds President Larry MacPhail flipped a switch and a crowd of 20,000 fans erupted in cheers as 600 floodlights dumped artificial daylight onto the baseball diamond. At that moment, the American pastime added a second shift. Cincinnati defeated Philadelphia 2-1 in major league baseball’s very first night game.
Few people, even then, recalled that the very same teams almost met under the same circumstances 26 years earlier. In 1909, League Park (aka The Palace of the Fans) was equipped with high-intensity carbon-arc lights on towers reaching 100 feet above the field. The Reds and the Phillies were expected to play an exhibition game to demonstrate the feasibility of night baseball on a June night that year, but Cincinnati executives got cold feet.
Category: The 20th Century
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