100 Years ago tonight

Forbes Field, Pittsburgh, Opening Day 1909

Say you're Harold Arlin, 25, working for Westinghouse in Pittsburgh.

Wait, East Pittsburgh to be exact.

You're a Westinghouse engineer but you're now the full-time announcer for radio station KDKA. You've read the results of the Harding/Cox election and done some interviews of note -- even having to read a script for Babe Ruth, who supposedly had "stage fright."

I still doubt that story as I never thought Ruth was afraid of anything.

Still, you're Harold Arlin and you're 25 years old. The date is Aug 4, 1921, and you're going to a baseball game tomorrow.

Are you nervous? Are you reading the boxscores in the local papers? Do you know the key players? Have you any idea of what you're going to say? Will you just wing it?

How will the press react to you? You know, the "ink-stained wretches" see you as a joke. You won't be around for long. They think you just parachute in.

My how times have not changed.

Are you worried about the equipment? Sure, there are microphones that you can use at the KDKA studio but this is a mobile setup. The whole thing has been thrown together. The mic is "like a mushroom or a tomato can with a felt lining."

Yet, even your colleagues thought baseball wouldn't fly on the air. This was to be a "one-time" thing. What owner in their right mind would allow such nonsense? Baseball on the "wireless?" Why, that will take away from the gate, right?

Right?

Nah, no need for nerves. It will all go fine, and, who cares if it doesn't?

There are plenty of other things to fall back on at KDKA, as well as working as a foreman in the daytime for Westinghouse.

So why worry if you're Harold Arlin, 25, of Westinghouse and KDKA in Pittsburgh. This whole thing is a fad. It's fun. It will fade.

You'll get to take in a ballgame for free, sitting in a suite seat near the field.

Besides, nobody will ever hear baseball on the radio again.