Ethiopia Joins League of Nations: Sovereignty Recognized

Night baseball started under a canopy of doubt and 632 light bulbs. On May 24, 1935, President Franklin Roosevelt pressed a telegraph key in the White House and the floodlights at Crosley Field in Cincinnati blazed to life, illuminating the first night game in major league history. The Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1 before 20,422 fans who had come as much for the spectacle as the score. General Electric had installed eight towers around the ballpark, each carrying clusters of 1,000-watt lamps aimed at the diamond. Nobody was entirely sure the light would be sufficient. Baseball purists and several team owners had actively opposed the idea, arguing that the game was meant to be played in daylight and that artificial light would degrade the quality of play. Reds president Larry MacPhail had pushed the experiment out of financial necessity. The team was drawing poorly, and Cincinnati's working-class fan base could not attend weekday afternoon games. MacPhail reasoned that moving games to the evening would multiply the available audience, and he was right. The seven night games the Reds played in 1935 drew more fans than the rest of the home schedule combined. Other teams were slow to follow. The Chicago Cubs would not install lights until 1988, the last holdout in the majors. But the economic logic was irresistible. Night games meant larger crowds, which meant more revenue, which meant television contracts that eventually transformed baseball from a gate-revenue business into a broadcast empire. Roosevelt's telegraph key at the White House was a theatrical touch, but the real innovation was commercial. MacPhail had understood that professional sports are entertainment businesses, and entertainment happens when the audience is available.