What Night Does to Baseball

by EDWIN O’CONNOR

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NIGHT baseball, a sport usually defined as baseball which is played after sundown and with benefit of artificial rather than natural lighting, is without doubt one of the entertainment phenomena of our time. Virtually unknown twenty years ago, its growth has been so vigorous that, in 1950, 95 per cent of all teams in organized baseball play night baseball almost exclusively. Of the 1232 games to be played in the major leagues this year, more than a third will be played after dark; during the months of May, June, July, and August, such teams as the St. Louis Cardinals, the Washington Senators, the Boston Braves, and the St. Louis Browns have voluntarily scheduled not a single daytime game. (At the present time day games must be played on certain occasions: on Sundays, on days preceding double-headers, or when a night game will inconvenience the traveling team.) Nor has the peak been reached, for each year the number of night games increases, and since they are well attended by baseball fans, and since increased attendance in turn brings considerable profits to the baseball clubs themselves, it would seem that night baseball should be received with satisfaction and joy by baseball men everywhere.

Oddly enough, such has not been the case. While some major-league teams have been enthusiastic in their support of the night game, others have viewed it with emotions ranging from suspicion to outright hostility. The Chicago Cubs refuse to allow any night games to be played in their home park. The Detroit Tigers, the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and the New York Giants have severely limited the number of night games which may be played on their fields. These teams are opposed to playing night baseball on an unrestricted scale, and the owner of the Boston Red Sox, Thomas Yawkey, has clearly expressed their opposition.

“I think this idea of more and more night baseball is all wrong,” he said recently. “The big reason is this: the game just isn’t as good at night. I’m not saying that good baseball can’t be played at night; I’m saying that by and large the consistent quality of play isn’t as high. It can’t be; no matter how good the lights are, they still throw things out of proportion. We play a few night games a year because the fans seem to want them, but we won’t play more because I don’t believe it’s good for our ballplayers or for baseball as a whole. I’m not trying to tell any of the other clubs what to do; all I know is that we’ve reached our limit.”

The fact seems to be that no matter how efficient the lighting systems in the ball parks, the players cannot see as well as they can in daylight. And when the players cannot see as well, they can neither hit nor field as well.

“I’ll tell you the big difference to the infielder,” said one shortstop. “You can’t get the jump on the ball at night. In daylight, you see the ball as it’s going to be hit, you see the angle of the bat, and you see the bat meet the ball. All this gives you a head start on where the ball’s going to go. It all happens in a split second, but it’s enough to give you that jump on the ball. At night you don’t get it, because you really don’t see the ball hit the bat; you see it after it leaves the bat, and that means you lose that much time. A lot of ground balls go through the infield at night that would be sure outs in the daytime. I’ve seen balls go by me that I would have eaten up in the afternoon; at night they’re sure base hits. That’s what the scorer calls them.”

In the outfield, the problem of playing the ball under lights seems just as acute. A fielder who is regarded as among the best in the American League spoke feelingly on this subject not long ago.

“I don’t like any part of it,” he said. “At night I can’t get started on the ball as soon; once I do get started I don’t judge it as well. You hear about night ball being good for the fielders because there’s no glare from the sun; all I know is that there’s enough glare from those lights to take care of me. If you play the sun field in the daytime, the sun is tough sometimes, but so are the lights at night. And remember this: when you play in the day the sun isn’t always out — there are some cloudy days. But nobody ever heard of a cloudy day in night ball!”

This loosening of defensive security should mean more substantial batting averages; but the batters have troubles of their own. Specifically, they are bothered by the combination of the lights and opposing pitchers, for night baseball, whatever it may not be, most certainly is a pitcher’s delight.

“They’re in the driver’s seat all the way,” said one veteran who, although a good hitter, feels that he would be a better one if he didn’t have to face pitchers at night. “Under the lights, every pitcher’s a potential twenty-game winner. And the funny thing is that the bad ones are helped more than the good. I mean by that that a really good pitcher— someone like Nowhouser, or Feller, or Newcombe— can make trouble for you any time, lights or no lights, but some of these other fellows couldn’t even play big-league ball except for the lights. I think the curve-ballers are helped most. At night you can’t see that spin on the ball when you’re hitting; all you can see is a white blur coming at you, and God only knows which way it’s going to break. A fast-ball pitcher hasn’t got as much advantage, but he’s still got enough. You take your great hitters like Williams, Musial, DiMaggio: they’ll hit at night and hit hard, but that’s because they’re the exceptions, the really great hitters who can hit anywhere, any time. For the rest of the boys, unless you have a lucky year, it can be pretty rough.”

If vision and play are imperfect under the lights in the major leagues, they are much more so in the minors. Here, on the proving grounds for young ballplayers, the lighting systems seldom approach major-league standards; they range from the fair to the frankly comic. When the big-league teams seek to appraise the possibilities of a young ballplayer performing under these conditions, accurate judgment is sometimes difficult. On this point, see Joe Cronin, General Manager of the Red Sox.

“ We hear that a boy is pitching well down South,” he said, “so we send a scout down to take a peek at him. After a while, when we haven’t heard from the scout, we send him a wire saying, ‘ How does he look?' Back comes the answer: ‘Okay so far, but I can’t tell yet. I’ve only seen him work under the lights.’ And it’s true: he can’t tell, and neither can anyone else. This kid may be pitching in a park where they have six light bulbs on one side of the plate and seven on the other. He’s a world-beater there, but what will he be when the hitters can see what he’s throwing? Also, how’s he going to learn to pitch, to really pitch, under those conditions? And how are all those other kids going to learn to hit? On all our minor-league clubs, we make sure that the boys get out there three and four afternoons a week, no matter how much night ball they play. That’s the only way we can teach them anything, and when you come right down to it, that’s the only way we can tell anything about them.”

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IF the players themselves are sometimes dissatisfied with the conditions of play in night baseball, they are even less fond of the day-by-night schedule which the night sport has forced upon them.

“Every man’s a Jolson these days,” a catcher said to me recently. “In bed late and up at noon. When I get up in the morning I have a late breakfast and then, because we’re playing that night and I can’t eat right before the game, I eat again about three-thirty or four in the afternoon. The game starts at eight-thirty that night; it may be over at ten-thirty, maybe midnight. Who knows? Anyway, by the time I’m out of ihc park it’s around midnight, I’ve just finished a big ball game, and I’m too wound up to go to sleep. Besides, I haven t eaten since that three-thirty meal and I’m hungry. So I eat another meal in any place that s open and you should see some of the places that are open— and then I go back to the hotel and to bed. I get to sleep at two, maybe later, and then, because there’s an afternoon game scheduled that day, I’m up again at ten. Great hours, eh? That’s why you hear all this talk about player fatigue and the season being too long. I know one man it’s too long for; at the end of the season, I’m beat!”

At best, a ballplayer’s career is a relatively short one; whatever night baseball may do, it is not likely 1o lengthen it. Few baseball men hold that the youngster coming up through the minor leagues, playing night ball exclusively, can learn the tricks which help to sustain a player through the season, which eventually prolong his playing life. And it is to be remembered that while youth is resilient, a program of midnight meals and early-morning retirements, continued from the player’s seventeenth or eighteenth year, is bound to take its toll.

Why, then, is night baseball played each year on an increasing scale? One reason is that in certain cities, because of the sweltering heat in the summer months, baseball is more comfortably played and watched at night than in the day. (This would hardly explain the Boston Braves’scheduling of night games in April, a notoriously fitful month in New England.) Another reason given is that night baseball makes it possible for workingmen and their families, who could not attend during the day, to come to the ball park. It is curious, however, that this is advanced by those who are among the strongest advocates of unrestricted night ball; in that event, what becomes of those who cannot go to the ball park except during the day? But ultimately the one big reason for the continued increase of night baseball is that it is a source of large and immediate profit to the ball clubs. Attendance figures at night games are huge, far greater than at the ordinary day game. This is the irresistible reason for the playing of night baseball on any extended basis; it has come to be for some baseball men the one remedy for the box-office blues.

But what about the long-range financial possibilities of night baseball? Once again Yawkey is an outspoken dissenter.

“Let’s look at night ball purely from the point of view of return,”said Yawkey, not long ago. “Of course you make money on a night game. We schedule fourteen night games a year at Fenway Park, and every one is sold out, or very nearly so. Every one draws more people than it would have if we’d played it in the afternoon. But here’s the point: the night game is the spectacle, the exception, the stunt; and speaking financially, I think its biggest value is its uniqueness. When you start playing more and more night games — and it’s easy enough to get into the habit — your average attendance will start to drop because it’s losing that uniqueness, it’s becoming more commonplace. And if you reach the point where you’re playing nothing but night games, I think your attendance will gradually level off until it’s about where it would be if you were playing all day games. So then where are you? You’re left with a game that’s not as good, played for darned little additional return. Personally, I say baseball is still basically a day game. And in the long run, I don’t think attendance figures will have much to do with lights at all. If you give your people a good ball club, they’ll come to your games by day; if you don’t they won’t!””

The question is whether night baseball will prove to be a boon or a disaster to the game. The big crowds now attending the night games, the brilliance of the spectacle, the miracle of the spinning turnstiles — all these seem sufficient evidence that what is needed is not less night ball but more. The fact remains, however, that despite all apparent success, some of the shrewdest, most experienced men in baseball remain unconvinced of the miracle. They are steady in their preference for the speed and skill of daytime baseball, and they view with increasing distrust the race towards lights, lights, and more lights. It could be that these men are simply being obstinate. Yet, on the other hand, it could be that, in reviewing the caliber of baseball as it is played at night, in speculating upon the future effect of night ball on the game and its players, they are not entirely unprophetic. It could even be, indeed, that they are dead right.