Center Field Shot 

                                                               NBC Joins the Fray

In early 1957, the other half of the “Big Two” (NBC) would take on CBS with its own game of the week, called simply Major League Baseball.  Although the Dancer, Fitzgerald, Sample ad agency, representing Falstaff, had already signed many teams for the CBS telecast, NBC found four major league teams (Braves, Pirates, Cubs, Senators) with games to sell.  According to NBC’s play-by-play choice, Lindsey Nelson, the network’s affiliates’ were demanding programming that could complete against Ole Diz on CBS.  Like the CBS games, the NBC games were blacked out in all major league markets and minor league markets with games in progress.  In addition to a limited variety of teams in its first year, NBC also had a smaller reach.  Its game of the week was carried by 116 stations in 37 states, compared to CBS’s games on 163 stations in 42 states. 

Although Nelson was a seasoned and highly skilled announcer, Dean’s star power meant NBC would need a star of its own to compete on Saturday afternoons.  They found their headliner in Leo Durocher, one of baseball’s most widely known figures.  He had spent a decade waging the New York baseball “wars” as manager first of the Dodgers and then the Giants.  Durocher was an active self-promoter and a broadcast celebrity in his own right.  If Dizzy was country kin, then Leo was his citified cousin.  He was married to film and television personality Lorraine Day and friends with Frank Sinatra and many other show business figures.  In one late 1950s Chesterfield cigarette magazine ad, Durocher appeared wearing a smoking jacket, something that would never hang on “Ole Diz’s” shoulders, at least in public.  Durocher had been associated with televised baseball as long as anyone had; he was interviewed by Red Barber as part of the very first Major League telecast on August 26, 1939.   But he was an announcing novice.  Where Dean had a decade’s experience as a baseball announcer on radio before he took on television’s first weekly national telecast, “the Lip” had never covered baseball on a regular basis. 

Durocher was nearly Dean’s equal in generating publicity.  He regularly appeared in The Sporting News.  Readers could learn of Durocher patching up an old rift with former Dodger outfielder Carl Furillo from his days as Giants manager, or Durocher confessing that he never learned how to keep score because he simply remembered each play in the game, or Durocher explaining why you need both a slow and a fast grounds crew to gain advantage during rain delays.

Comparing the CBS and NBC versions of the game of the week in May 1957, The Sporting News found  “Columbia’s pair used a lighter, livelier touch—one which was more colorful, talkative, reminiscent, anecdotal and more personal.”  Durocher was clearly an ex-manager:  “he anticipates strategy. . . guesses what may be done; concedes misses.  He is a keen observer and a sharp analyst at all times.”  However, “his voice level is sometimes a bit high and shrill.”  Durocher stayed with NBC through the 1959 season, when he left to pursue coaching opportunities.  He was replaced by Fred Haney, manager of the pennant winning 1957 and 1958 Milwaukee Braves.