On This Date in Sports August 5, 1921: KDKA Bringing the Game Home

In collaboration with the Sportsecyclopedia.com

Pittsburgh radio station KDKA is the first to broadcast a baseball game, as the Pittsburgh Pirates take on the Philadelphia Phillies. Harold Arlin, a local staff announcer for the radio station, handles the play-by-play as the Pirates defeat the Phillies 8-5 at Forbes Field. The experiment works well enough that KDKA and WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, broadcast the World Series against the New York Giants and New York Yankees two months later.  

As the 1920s began, a new industry was born, Radio. For the first time, a program could be broadcast over a long range with a radio receiver. Experiments over wireless communication date back to the turn of the century when English physicist John Ambrose Fleming. He developed a device called an "oscillation valve" (because it passes current in only one direction). This tube did not allow two-way conversations but allowed for sound to be conducted over radio waves. 

Radio evolved over the next decade, with Westinghouse getting government contracts to expand the reach and use of radio during World War I. When the war was over, Westinghouse began selling radio receivers while setting up radio stations in major cities in the United States. In 1920 KDKA in Pittsburgh covered the 1920 Presidential election, bringing results to listeners in real-time, on the same day they were granted a license as the first commercial radio station. The Radio Corporation of America was also moving in on Westinghouse's territory, each taking steps to lay the foundation for the coming mass media. 

Both Westinghouse and RCA would lay the tracks down for the coming media explosion. While RCA, with NBC in New York, set the standard for entertainment programs, KDKA in Pittsburgh set the standard for news and sports. Harold Arlin, a 25-year-old engineer at KDKA, came up with the idea of calling a baseball game from the stadium as KDKA began broadcasting barriers along the way. Arlin set up in a box seat at Forbes Field and called the game to the small group of listeners who purchased a Westinghouse radio. 

The broadcast was a success, and soon, more stations began to follow the Arlin model. In October, Harold Arlin and KDKA would broadcast the first football game between Pittsburgh and West Virginia, as KDKA, along with WJZ in Newark, New Jersey, broadcast the World Series from the Polo Grounds between the New York Yankees and New York Giants. 

Over the next two decades, radio became the voice of America, as stations and networks arose across the country. One early baseball pioneer was future President Ronald Regan who recreated the action of a game using results read from a telegraph. While full-time broadcast of baseball would take time to develop especially for road teams, the era of sports in the home had begun.