Everything They Had by David Halberstam Page B

addition, other inventions were taking place which would not only bind America together more as a nation, but make sports an ever more important part of the fabric of the society.
    It was not just the games themselves that were about to change and become more important. It was the delivery system—the coming of modern broadcasting, first radio, then network television, and then satellite television—which was going to change the way Americans felt about sports; for the new, more modern delivery system was about to make the games more accessible (and thus more important) and make the athletes themselves infinitely more famous, and soon, infinitely wealthier. In the beginning, there was radio. It would help usher in what became known as the Golden Age of Sport. In 1923 the Yankees defeated the Giants in the World Series in six games. Ruth hit three home runs, was walked constantly and scored eight times. It was a noteworthy series, not the least of all because it was the first time the World Series was broadcast across the country on radio. The principal voice at the microphone was that of a young man named Graham McNamee, and the fact that this was broadcast to millions of Americans made the Babe’s fame—and the importance of sport within the culture—that much greater.
    For it was not just the game itself which was changing, it was the amplification system in a country so vast, which for the first time was becoming linked as one by a new and powerful broadcasting system. On a vast, sprawling land mass where the connection of ordinary people to each other had often been tenuous, big-time sports, broadcast to the entire nation at one time, giving the nation shared icons, was to prove immensely important. It was not just a shared moment of entertainment, though that was critical in the rise of the popularity of sports, but it was to be an important part of the connecting tissue of the society, arguably more important in a country so large where the population was so ethnically diverse—and new—than it might have been in a smaller country with one dominating strain of ethnicity. Sports in some way united America and bound Americans to each other as other aspects of national life did not—it offered a common thread, and in time a common obsession. Americans who did not know each other could find community and commonality by talking of their mutual sports heroes.
    Almost overnight Graham McNamee became a major cultural figure. In January 1927 he worked the first true national sports hookup, broadcasting the Rose Bowl game. He did every World Series game from 1923 through 1934. He covered the first political conventions broadcast live. On the occasion of Lindbergh’s triumphant inaugural flight to Paris, the voice that most Americans heard the news from was that of McNamee. He was very good at what he did. “The father of broadcasting,” the distinguished broadcaster Red Barber called him. In the early days of broadcasting, there were no radio booths. So the announcers had to work in an open stadium and do their work in the most primitive of all possible settings. McNamee, Barber noted, “walked into the stadium, sat down … and told the nation what it was waiting to hear and had never heard before … told them about 10 different sports. I concentrated on two—baseball and football—and I thought I had my hands full.... His sign-off was distinctive: ‘This is Graham McNamee speaking. Good night, all.’”
    Thus was the audience increased, and thus was sports made more important. Americans by means of radio could now monitor its sports heroes as never before. Events in the world of sports seemed to be ever more important and hold the attention of the public that much more. The resulting popularity of sports was amazing, as was the resilience of its appeal throughout the Depression. On the eve of World War II, baseball seemed to be poised at a level of almost