DH 13 2013
ALEX RODRIGUEZ Well, at some level, yes—clearly and perhaps indelibly. But New Jersey baseball is very much alive and well. It thrives in the state’s minor league teams. In fact, New Jersey minor league ball has a long and distinguished history. In his book Baseball in New Jersey: The Game of History, which accompanied a 1995 exhibit at the New Jersey State Museum, John T. Cunningham argues that the 1937 Newark Bears were among the greatest minor league teams ever assembled. He is far from alone in thinking this, and for good reason: the Bears, then minor league affiliates of the Yankees, rounded out the regular season with 109 wins and 43 losses—an incredible 25½ games ahead of the next best team. They went on to edge the Columbus Red Birds to claim the Little World title in a championship series that stretched to seven games after the Bears lost the first three. The team’s roster included luminaries such as Tommy Henrich, Spud Chandler, Joe Gordon, and Charlie “King Kong” Keller, and the overwhelming majority of that 1937 lineup would go on to play major league ball. Viewed from a present that is so saturated with sports media (instantly updated online box scores, games streaming on smart phones, dozens of sports channels on television) it’s easy to forget how comparatively limited Bears fans’ access was to their team. Most fans followed the Bears’ season through radio broadcasts—which certainly remain an element of the current baseball universe—but those broadcasts were constrained in ways that are hard to imagine now. WNEW’s Earl Harper was the voice of the Bears in those days, but when the team was on the road, he stayed in his Newark studio, essentially spinning broadcasts from thin air as he dramatized the telegraph messages he received. As Cunningham writes, “There was usually one word, ‘ball’ or ‘strike,’ or perhaps a few words, ‘popup 2B’ or ‘fly, left.’ Harper filled in the blanks as he imagined the action that might be taking place on the distant field. ‘Ball,’ for example, became ‘inside, close to Rolfe’s chest. Red steps out, glowers at the pitcher, then steps back in,’ and so on until the next telegraphed word was received.” And according to an account in the WNEW archives, Harper would also enliven his broadcasts with sound effects, snapping a matchstick in front on his microphone to the crack of a wooden bat making contact with the ball. By all accounts, he was hugely popular with his audience.
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URBAN AGENDA MAGAZINE
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spring 2017
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