Evening star. [volume], September 01, 1940, Page 11, Image 71

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
as an ex-office boy, I contemplate night
A baseball with mixed emotions. As
A A plain as the nose on your face, it is
a capitalistic plot to enforce the speed-up on
the junior members of the firm. For what good
is the ancient and honorable grandmother's
funeral gag. now that you can actually work
all day and still get to the ball park in time to
see the game? That is, assuming there are
any seats left.
But seriously, this season’s tenth anni
versary of official night baseball is much more
significant than it appears. Night games were
inaugurated in the minor leagues at Des
Moines, Iowa, in 1930, and worked so well
that today seven outof ten minor-league games
are played under lights. But night baseball
was persistently resisted by the big-league
magnates until Larry MacPhail, present
head of the Brooklyn Dodgers, introduced it
in Cincinnati several seasons ago when he
was general manager of the Reds, whose cash
customers were getting fewer and fewer. The
advent of the mazdas turned out to be just
what the doctor ordered, and was one of the
factors that put enough cash in the Reds’
bank account to spawn a pennant winner
last year.
MacPhail thus broke the ice, but still only
eight major-league parks have installed night
baseball lights, and three others are inves
tigating the rumor that it has been successful.
To be sure, it costs money to light a ball
park — but it's cheaper than playing to
empty seats. Go through the attendance
figures for big-league games last year and
see how frequently teams drew 3,(MX) admis
sions in stadiums big
enough to hold 40,000
to 50,000 customers.
Then look at the night
game records in those
same parks and observe
how thirty-five such
games averaged 24,000
spectators, or an aggre
gate of nearly £00,000!
In the maiden test at
Cincinnati, indeed,
there were four times
as many cash customers
at the first seven night
games as there were at
any seven comparable
day games.
As a matter of fact,
this night ball playing
is really seventeen years
old. The whole thing came about quite acci
dentally as far back as 1923, when the General
Electric Company undertook to illuminate
the company’s new athletic field at Lynn,
Massachusetts. Nobody had given a thought
to night baseball then: the idea was merely to
prolong the available recreational period of
daytime employees. But even before the en
gineers were finished with the installation a
gang of neighborhood kids showed up one
night with balls and bats and proceeded to
organize a game. At first nobody paid any
attention to them. But presently it dawned
on the engineers that these kids were playing
a normal brand of baseball under the lights.
The First Game
"Wk ’ve got something here,” concluded
the engineers. And in August, 1923, after a few
technical alterations were made, 5,000 spec
tators in Lynn saw the first successful night
baseball game ever played. (The term, “first
successful game” is used advisedly, because
this idea was tried as far back as 1883 in Fort
Wayne. Indiana, but was a Hop because the
illumination was inadequate.) Two months
later 6,000 people saw the first night-football
game at the same field in Lynn.
But that was nearly twenty years ago and
there’s been a revolution in the nation’s sport
ing habits. It came most dramatically in
minor-league baseball circles and quickly
stormed football. Now Colonel Matt Winn,
sponsor of the Kentucky Derby, risks the
opinion that in five years half of the horse
racing in the country will be under lights.
Naturally, this development is not re
stricted to professional-sports operations. Soft
hall, which is so popular all over the country,
has been given a further boost by night play
ing. In winter, ice skating, outdoor hockey
and tobogganing have all come under the
glow of the mazdas. And many colleges and
even high schools have introduced night foot
ball successfully.
In Platte City. Missouri, for example, the
high-school team has played football under
lights for two seasons, increasing game at
4cm*
LIGHT UP-AN PLAY!
Night baseball started it. Now floodlit parks and
playgrounds throughout the nation are working
overtime. Result ? Less crime, fewer accidents
and a whole new world of sport for old and young
by Paul W. Kearney
tendance 215 per cent. And in Montpelier,
Ohio, high-school football at night jumped
the average attendance 200 per cent.
in Fresno, California, the Miniature Racing
Car Club — those enthusiasts who race tiny
model cars at 60 miles an hour or better —
illuminated their one-third-mile asphalt track
and now- draw from 5,000 to 8,000 cash spec
tators to their meets.
So the real significance of this revolution is
not that the professional promoters will take
in more money, but that more recreational
time has been given the sports-loving public.
And we won't reach the crux of the matter
until we begin to illuminate "sand-lot” dia
monds, more softball fields, our playgrounds,
parks and other recreational facilities, which
so often are a dead loss
after twilight.
When cities lay out
tax money for public
playgrounds, it is only
horse sense to spend a
trifle more and treble
or quadruple the use of
those areas. Yet in the
entire United States
there aren't more than
2,000 lighted recrea
tional areas — and fifty
per cent of those have
been created since
1927. Chicago and
Nashville were really
the pioneers in this
field; Milwaukee. Mem
phis, Cincinnati, Seattle
and a few others have done outstanding work
since. But the bulk of the progress has been
in the smaller rather than the larger centers.
Decatur, Illinois, for example, financed the
lighting of one playground through the Com
munity Chest and other contributions. It was
such a howling success with the public that
four more playgrounds were illuminated and
plans made for installations in all the others.
A Good Example
Flint, Michigan, as another specific case,
illuminated not only forty-two play areas
but also its schools and schoolyards — which
are a dead loss after 4 p.m. in nine cities out
of ten. It packs these areas nightly with as
many adults as children, either watching or
participating in some form of wholesome rec
reation. One result was a seventy-per-cent
reduction in juvenile delinquency. Another
was a marked reduction in deaths of children
playing on streets. A third was the building
up of a fine civic morale.
I’ve been in most of the important cities
of this country, but I have never seen any
thing like the spectacle of Flint at night,
when seemingly the entire population can
hardly wait to clear away the supper dishes
and dash out to schoolyard or playground
and have some fun. All you need is one
glimpse of thousands of mothers and fathers
and sons and daughters all playing together
under the lights, and you ask: “Why in
heaven’s name don’t we do that in our home
town?”
I mean, why can’t healthy fun take the
place of standing around a gin mill all night
or congregating on street corners or wallowing
in idle gossip over the back fence? Healthy
fun means not only big-league baseball; it
means, also, softball, tennis, swimming, horse
shoe tossing, badminton, archery, ping-pong
and bicycling on restricted paths.
It means group singing, clay-modeling
classes, amateur concerts, folk dancing,
manual crafts — any recreation the people
enjoy in the time they can most conveniently
enjoy it — at night.
Crimes at Night
I came home from that trip just in time
to read an observation by New York City’s
Police Commissioner to the effect that any
man who walked through parts of Central
Park after dark took his life in his hands. And
I couldn’t help but marvel at how far the so
called “tank towns’’ have progressed beyond
us smug city slickers!
The results of inaugurating such a plan are
worth the time and money it costs. Many of
the communities that have illuminated their
play areas have financed initial costs by public
subscription; about half of them make mod
erate charges for the use of certain lighted
areas. In not a few places meters have been
installed which turn on the lights when the
proper amount in coins has been deposited.
Proper layout of play areas simplifies the
lighting problem, and judicious use of the
facilities also results in economies.
But these are mere details. The more im
portant thing is that we sorely need lighted
recreational areas in all our cities. Warden
Lewis E. Lawes of Sing Sing Prison has said
that “it is a well-established fact that super
vised recreation in congested areas makes for
crime prevention.” And since eighty per cent
of our crimes are committed after dark, it’s
no trick to add two and two together.
The National Recreation Association also
points out that adults, through music, drama,
games, athletics, social activities and com
munity celebrations, should find in their com
mon interests the opportunity for a common
community service.
A glance at today’s headlines will tell the
least observant that there are troubled days
ahead — days when community solidarity is
going to be rtiore vital to our existence as a
free people than ever before in our history.
So let's light up our public playgrounds and
parks and get busy cementing that civic unity
— at night!
The End
Night lighting has brought added throngs to baseball and football fields. It can do the same for city playgrounds