The Cincinnati Reds and Brooklyn Dodgers Play the First Televised Major League Baseball Game

It was on W2XBS, later known as WNBC, where Red Barber called the Brooklyn Dodgers-Cincinnati Reds doubleheader on Saturday, August 26, 1939 from Ebbets Field -- the first major-league baseball TV broadcast..

The Reds won the first, 5-2 while the Dodgers won the second, 6-1 and Barber did them both without the benefit of a monitor and with only two cameras capturing the action.

On this day in 1939, the first televised Major League baseball game is broadcast on station W2XBS, the station that was to become WNBC-TV. Announcer Red Barber called the game between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.

At the time, television was still in its infancy. Regular programming did not yet exist, and very few people owned television sets--there were only about 400 in the New York area. Not until 1946 did regular network broadcasting catch on in the United States, and only in the mid-1950s did television sets become more common in the American household.

It's the 70th anniversary of the first Major League Baseball game to be broadcast on television. The double-header between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field aired on experimental station W2XBS, which is now WNBC-TV. It's estimated that 3,000 people watched the game on TV.