Center Field Shot: A History of Baseball on Television

A well written book in which the authors discuss the still developing and burgeoning relationship between baseball and television. First discussed is local baseball telecasts of baseball (which were done well before any national coverage of baseball), the national coverage in terms of broadcast and cable channels, and how this "marriage" of baseball and television has been dysfunctional - various announcers are discussed, too. Many nice insights in this book - it gives THE best explanation for the declining attendance figures of the Fifties and the contraction of the minor leagues in the Fifties that I have read in my lifetime - it was almost like a life mystery was explained to me when I read that section. It's also fun to read about how few camera angles were used in those early local broadcasts of games, and how surprising it was to read that the center field camera shot was discouraged by MLB until the late Sixties. A book definitely worth getting - the chapters on the television rights are slow and tedious reading (X year contract for X million dollars, etc.) and the chapter references in this book (ie "see Chapter XX" or "discussed in Chapter XX") got a little annoying and were a little too numerous but all in all, a better book than I expected.

This is a great introduction to baseball and the medium of television, but beware that it's pretty heady stuff. It doesn't take long before you have to wade into contracts and deals so complex that I still don't think I understand how they work. The later chapters especially, which deal with recent situations, can be pretty complex.My hope was that this would be about how TV has been used to cover the game, and the book does include that. But it ultimately has to spend a whole lot of time talking about where the money comes from and where it goes, especially once the basic logistics of covering a game were settled.I enjoyed it, but had to slog through the later chapters...

wonderful book ,tells about a part of baseball history that many fans are not aware of