Collecting Old Baseball Radio Broadcasts
How I Discovered The Hidden Hobby
Collecting Old Baseball Radio Broadcasts
In retrospect, July 30, 1936 was a really uneventful day.
Most newspapers focused on the 1936 Republican National Convention, which was being held in Cleveland at the time. We’ll stay away from the politics of Al Landon and Frank Knox; if you really want, you can read more here.
The pennant races were hot, but not necessarily all that close. The Cubs and Cardinals were battling it out in the National League, as the eventual champion Giants remained a safe distance out of first. Meanwhile, as expected the Yankees were dominating everybody in the American League.
In Chicago, the 50-45 White Sox hosted the 32-64 Athletics for the third of a three game series. Philadelphia was already 31 1/2 games out of first place, well on its way to another 100 loss season. At 12 games out, the White Sox were a little bit closer to making the summer interesting, though they never really got any closer in the end.
That Athletics - White Sox game wound up being broadcast on the radio:
And that’s where I come in.
The Recording
I’m not sure why, but that July 30, 1936 Athletics - White Sox game was recorded.
Don’t believe me? You can download it here for free.
If you listen closely, you can hear evidence that it was recorded on an old transcription disk. The cackling, the occasional skips, and the occasional repeated audio segment are clear indications of a so-called “electrical transcription.”
But it’s all there. The entire game is present, and it’s easy to listen to.
Like most people, I had absolutely no clue that anything like this existed. I lived for years blissfully unaware of the historical treasures from the past that still spread among us.
It was sometime in the mid- or late-1990s when I saw the light. Deep in the depths of the now-defunct APBA Catalog, somewhere near the back, was a two-page spread by a company called Danrick Enterprises.
Danrick offered audio cassette copies of radio broadcasts of old baseball games. I had never heard of anything like it. I was excited, especially to see broadcasts featuring old teams that had moved long before my father was born.
This game was the oldest listing they had:
We bought a copy for $13. I remember being worried that we’d be ripped off. I was amazed at the quality of the audio, however, and thought it was a lot of fun to be able to listen to an old game whenever I wanted.
And that’s what got me going.
There’s really nothing quite like listening to the radio broadcast of an old baseball game. It takes you into another world, opening up the past for you to explore firsthand.
Sure, you can’t see much — but I’d consider that more a feature than a flaw. Old time broadcasters couldn’t rely on pictures to get the story across, after all. The flow of words, the nuance, the balance between the crowd and the broadcasters — all of this serves to create a baseball story better than the best storybook.
The Collection
Sadly, Danrick Enterprises no longer exists.
You can still find its old website on The Internet Archive. It was run by a man from New Jersey named Charlie Schwartzbard, a man who I had quite a bit of email communication with about a decade ago.
Sadly, I no longer have those old emails. I assume that Charlie has since passed away; he was in his 80s when I talked with him. He had a few interesting stories about the old days of the baseball broadcast collecting industry, stories that I’ll share here in the future.
Interestingly, it seems that his company predated his entry into the world of reselling baseball radio broadcasts. I stumbled across this interesting trade magazine entry from 1980:
I don’t know the first thing about amateur radio, and can’t comment at all on the technical details mentioned here.
I do know a thing or two about old radio broadcasts, however. I’ve amassed a fairly large collection over the years, adding up to just over 2,200 individual games ranging from 1934 to 2008.
It’s not a complete collection, and the MP3 files aren’t necessarily of excellent quality. It is sizable, however, and contains some games that are tough to find — from random 1978 regular season games that only Danrick sold to an almost complete collection of 2008 Chicago Cubs broadcasts downloaded directly from the Major League Baseball website.
I offer access to the entire collection for free to paying subscribers. See the member’s area for more details.
My Request
My request to you is simple.
Do you collect radio broadcasts of old games?
If you do, please contact me. I’d love to compare collections, trade, or even just swap stories.
The reason why these 1936 White Sox and Cubs games were recorded was because Judge Landis had heard some reports about Hal Totten allegedly inciting unruly fan behavior and wanted to hear more of his broadcasts for any sign of bad behavior that could merit discipline. That's also the reason why the 1934-45 World Series broadcasts exist. Landis wanted recordings to see if the announcers did anything out of line and if so, he'd lower the boom and bar them from future broadcasts (that's what happened to Ted Husing of CBS after the 1934 World Series).
After Landis died, Happy Chandler had no interest in doing recordings and that is why nothing exists of the 1946 World Series.