Center Field Shot 

Walker and Bellamy have provided a lucid, comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the historical evolution of the relationship between professional baseball and television.   There is no better way to anticipate how the relationship will morph in the future than by understanding its past.

Andrew Zimbalist,
author of Baseball and Billions &
May the Best Team Win

From the initial telecast in 1939 to the multimedia delivery options of 2008, this remarkably comprehensive and exhaustively researched study not only traces the history of baseball telecasts but also examines the symbiotic relationship between sport and television.  Students of mass communication, baseball history and cultural studies will find this case study invaluable for understanding the growth of nationally televised sport, the technological and commercial developments in the television industry and the impact of sport and television on American culture.

Larry Gerlach,
Past-President,
Society for American Baseball Research

In Center Field Shot, Jim Walker and Rob Bellamy provide the first comprehensive look at the game behind the game of baseball and television synergy.   They offer fans and scholars alike a lively treatment of the institutional dancing of two "national pastimes" that shines important light on the cultural impact of today's ever-expanding sports-media complex.  Penetrating conventional wisdom and the spin of the public relations machine, Walker and Bellamy chronicle the baseball-television marriage through its local and national years and ponder the cultural, regulatory, and economic backstories of an often dysfunctional relationship.  In contending with the hits and errors of synergy, not only pitches a complete game but goes extra innings to assess what it will take for baseball to succeed in the new media environment.

Lawrence A. Wenner,
Editor, MediaSport & Media, Sports, and Society

Center Field Shot is a winner. It's smart, crisply written, and packed with eye-opening research and analysis. I learned something new on every page. Turn off the TV and start reading. I guarantee you'll be glad you did.

Jonathan Eig,
best-selling author of 
Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig &
Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson's First Season