Thank you, Mr. Arlin

Harold Arlin

On this day -- August 5, 1921 -- a 25-year-old electrical engineer and foreman from Westinghouse named Harold Arlin went to Forbes Field in Pittsburgh.

He wasn't just there to take in a ballgame, as the Pirates hosted the Philadelphia Phillies. We can tell you, courtesy of Baseball Reference, that the Buccos won the game, 8-5. Cy Williams, who Baseball Reference says compares most favorably to Bobby Murcer (of all people) homered that day in the loss.

Possum Whitted (yes, you read that correctly) had two hits to pace the Pirates, and Max Carey and Rabbit Maranville were hall of famers on the Pittsburgh roster that day.

We know the game took 1:57, but don't know the weather conditions.

But back to Harold Arlin, who sat down behind home plate that day. Working for KDKA, considered by many to be the first radio station in history (or at least the first commercial radio station), he took a bold step for the nascent outlet.

Arlin had previously read news headlines, and was said to be at the mic when KDKA went on the air in Nov, 1920, as he read the returns of the Harding-Cox Presidential Election.

On this day, Arlin gave birth to baseball play-by-play.

According to ExplorePAHistory:

"We were looking for programming," Arlin recalled years later, "and baseball seemed a natural. I went to Forbes Field and set up shop." The operation, a hand-held telephone connected to a transmitter in a box behind home plate, had a few glitches, though. "Nobody told me I had to talk between pitches," he conceded, and when he did, his distinctive deep voice did not always come through. "Sometimes the transmitter didn't work. Often the crowd noise would drown us out. We didn't know whether we'd talk into a total vacuum or whether somebody would hear us."

Other sports broadcasts were attempted in one form or another prior to 1921 (including a boxing match on KDKA earlier that year), but this was the first time baseball had been attempted. More than any sport, the country became hooked.

Eventually.

Arlin would also call a Davis Cup tennis match (another first) a day later, but thought the baseball game was a one-time thing. Further baseball broadcast efforts were made with the 1921 World Series in New York (over KDKA, WJZ - Newark, and WBZ - Springfield). He'd also add college football to the list of firsts with the broadcast of the Backyard Brawl -- Pitt hosting West Virginia. Pitt won the game, 21-13.

The attempts to broadcast baseball continued through the 1920's, with Graham McNamee eventually assuming the position of "voice" of the World Series in 1923. By 1927, the World Series was coast-to-coast via the nearly one-year-old NBC.

Individual teams began to make deals to either broadcast games live or via recreation, complete with sound effects. The last holdouts were the three New York teams, who had a gentlemen's agreement to not broadcast games due to the fear of losing ticket sales. That ended in 1939.

Oh it's a long-winded story that we can tell at great length, but the main point remains that, on this very day -- August 5, 1921 -- Harold Arlin called the first baseball game.

Certainly, I feel a large amount of debt to him, McNamee, and the many other pioneers who got us to where we are today.