Swamp Bats webcasts

The W2XBS camera. Check out the sweet NBC dish antanae.

The first baseball game to be televised was a match-up of two college teams, Princeton and Columbia at Columbia’s Baker Field on May 17, 1939. Two mobile units were used to support the telecast; one filled with the electronics to transmit the game, the other to haul the camera and gear.

RCA, the corporate owner of NBC, produced the game and carried on its broadcast station W2XBS (now WNBC) to about 400 televisions in New York City.

 Some of those TV’s were display models at the RCA exhibit at the World’s Fair and others were located at RCA’s Rockefeller Center headquarters. The rest of the audience was rich people in Manhattan who owned a TV.

The account of the telecast in the next day’s New York Times reported “It was impossible for the single camera to include both the pitcher’s box and home plate at the same time. The ‘eye’ was focused on the mound for the wind up and quickly followed the ball to the batter and catcher.”

The camera. There was only one and it was as maneuverable as your refrigerator.

How times have changed.

Fans who can’t make it to Alumni Field can watch the Swamp Bats online. Folks can go to TEAMLINE to watch the game on their laptop or, if you prefer the big screen treatment, you can connect the feed to your flat screen television. On most nights, the telecasts from Alumni Field are managed by Adam Chabot and Joshua Durisseau.

Five cameras capture the action. There are cameras in the press box pointed at various spots on the field, a camera along the grandstand and one in center field to provide the classic shot from behind the pitcher.  

Adam chooses the shot you see. Unless Josh does. “It’s a team effort,” Adam says. Because there’s only so much room in the press box, Adam has the bird’s eye view while, from where he sits, Josh has the image of each camera on computer monitor. By computer keyboard, Josh feeds the image to the viewer.

Adam Chabot and Joshua Durisseau

 Adam is senior member of the video crew; he’s been doing webcasts since 2010. Josh attends Keene High and found his way to the press box through school connections.

There’s no immediate way to determine how many people have dialed up the game. One night, eight people were watching. However, the important thing to Adam and Josh was that the eight were getting a good webcast, that the pictures were going out.