Thursday, April 23, 2015

Frank Robinson: Player/Manager with Homerun/Win

On April 8, 1975, Frank Robinson broke the managing color barrier in Major League Baseball.  For the first time in league history, the Cleveland Indians were managed by an African American.  


Thanks to MLBNetwork and their new morning chatfest 'MLB Central', we are treated to a videotaped view of that historic afternoon.

The slugger/skipper didn't waste any time, hitting his first homerun of the season in the bottom of the first inning off of Doc Medich.  The homerun would be #575 of Robinson's career.  


As you can see in the entire segment, there are a ton of news 'pickups' used to fill out the footage.  You can clearly tell the difference between the actual game broadcast footage and the news footage.  


Notice on the outfield grass that the yardage markers from what I can only assume was Browns games in December.  The Notre Dame/Navy game (which was played in the stadium 11 times) was not held at Municipal that season.  



There are a few cues we can take away from this video.  Firstly, it is part of a larger black and white segment that matches the actual game broadcast clip very well. 


Secondly, the news anchor we see talking as part of this larger segment is John Chancellor, NBC's New York based Evening News.  The game clip has actual broadcast audio on it and is easily recognizable by the 'HOLY COW!" call as Robinson deposits the pitch into the left field seats.  Phil Rizzuto gives us the call on what is surely a WPIX telecast.  



The amalgamation of these clips seems to be a national news special report that had WPIX sharing game broadcast clips with NBC News. This footage exists, as a minute and twenty second clip, in the NBC Universal Archives.  The description in that log (as follows) matches perfectly with the footage MLBN shows:
FRANK ROBINSON TAKES HELM AS PLAYER-MANAGER FOR CLEVELAND INDIANS CLEVELAND INDIANS PLAYER-MANAGER FRANK ROBINSON JOGS ONTO FIELD TO CHEERS FROM CROWD AT MUNICIPAL STADIUM. AT PRESS CONFERENCE ROBINSON SAYS HIS JOB WILL BE TOUGH IN HIS DUAL ROLE ON THE CLUB & ADMITS HIS PERFORMANCE WILL BE WATCHED CLOSELY BY THE CLUB & OTHERS. RACHEL ROBINSON; WIDOW OF JACKIE ROBINSON; THROWS OUT GAME BALL. ROBINSON HITS HOME RUN OFF THE NY YANKEES. FANS CHEER AS ROBINSON ROUNDS BASES. YANKEES CATCHER THURMAN MUNSON SEEN. TEAMMATES CONGRATULATE ROBINSON AT DUGOUT WITH HANDSHAKES & HE TIPS HIS HAT TO THE CROWD.
It is a shame that this is black and white, instead of color.  Seeing those hideously unique maroon jumpers the Indians wore would have been a real treat.  Still, this is a great piece of baseball history.  Through various clip films and shows, we have quite a few of Frank Robinson's 586 career homeruns although those mostly come from his days with the Orioles.  

5 comments:

  1. Outstanding find! The bw source tape might come from the Vanderbilt University TV News archive, which began taping broadcasts in '68 but wouldn't switch to color for another decade...the tape saved at NBC/U is more likely than not "in living color". Best -- Rob (t77)

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  2. FWIW, Vanderbilt also has the 4/8/75 CBS Evening News piece on Robby, which credits WPIX-TV as a "film" source.

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  3. I have the CBS News from that night from Vanderbilt and they played the WPIX call of the HR by Rizzuto. I think it is possible that for this feature, they *might* have used the WPIX call from the CBS Evening News and mixed in the NBC feature report from the same day as well which likely did not carry the HR call and clip since if it had, the Vanderbilt entry would have noted using footage courtesy of WPIX as the CBS Vanderbilt entry does. Vanderbilt News Archives did indeed not record the newscasts in color until they got new machines in mid-1979.

    Vanderbilt preserved newscasts I might add also includes a couple "Huntley-Brinkley Reports" from October 1968 that shows clips from Games 1 and 7 of the 1968 WS in original videotape quality (albeit B/W). There are also other newscasts with telecast footage of baseball games that are lost forever like a brief glimpse of Game 3 of the 69 ALCS and the final out of the 73 NLCS (called by Jim Simpson on NBC).

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  4. Thank you both (or all three?) for the additional information. With all the footage being black and white, it seemed likely that it all came from the same source. Like you said, it isn't 100% clear that both of these sources were used. The game broadcast stuff from WPIX seemed to match very accurately to the NBCUniversal archive listing.

    Always appreciate the input!

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  5. One other thing I'd note is that in formatting the old footage for today's viewing screens the top of the original image has been lopped off which on Vanderbilt news recordings always contained a timer strip across the top of the image.

    The CBS Evening News did use the telecast tape of WPIX in the clip so the listing calling it "film courtesy of" was technically incorrect.

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