The Night the Lights Went on In Bushville
Like an obedient child emulating a revered parent the Iowa Cubs are at work on the installation of a new state-of-the-art HD video board in time for their home opener on April 17th.
At 24x64 or 1,536 square feet the magic screen will pale in comparison to the 42x95, 3990 sq. ft. colossus that’s being erected to tower above Wrigley Field’s left field bleachers and Waveland Avenue. It will be less than half the size but is certainly imposing enough to be viewed, let us say, as a Triple A scale model.
It’s high time for an upgrade. Depending on the vantage point and the mood of the sun the new board’s predecessor could be effectively invisible and in recent years has displayed more marketing and promo filler than, for instance, player stats. Not that that trend’s likely to change.
Speaking of trends at America’s ballparks, you know of course that all of this modern malarkey traces directly back to an event that happened right here in Des Moines, long a baseball hotbed, on May 2, 1930, right?
On that date the first professional baseball game ever played under permanent lights was won by the Class B Western League Des Moines Demons by a score of 13-6 over the Wichita Aviators. Were it not for the novelty of the nocturnal experiment the last eight innings would have been anticlimactic after the Demons hung an 11-spot in the bottom of the first. That’s right, 11. And no, it wasn’t at all because the visitors had no visibility. They played an errorless game and everyone agreed at game’s end that the lights were more than bright enough, thanks to a design by GE engineer Fred Ralston. Depending on where you look, Ralston is variously referred to as the father and the inventor of nighttime ballgames.
Lee Keyser was the Demons’ owner and the man who actually flipped the switch by deciding to take the considerable chance on primetime game times. What did he and his counterparts across the country have to lose by then? Not much. As the Great Depression was kicking into gear the minor leagues seemed doomed. But after that game in Des Moines, which drew a crowd in excess of 12,000 to watch a team that typically attracted no more than several hundred, light standards quickly went up at bush league parks across America. Eventually, the Opening Night game came to be called The Game That Saved Baseball in some quarters..
It also marked the night when Shorty Irslund was born, according to the opening pages of a book entitled Versus the Demons. But that’s another story.
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