By Walter Elliott
NEWARK – What listeners and viewers of Broadcasting Major League Baseball’s current 117th World Series take for granted – seven audio and video channels – began with Newarkers listening to WJZ here 100 years ago.
WJZ, above the Westinghouse Meter Plant at Orange and Plane streets, carried the Oct. 5-13, 1921 series between New York City’s Giants and Yankees as live as they could make it for its time.
“Newark Sunday Call” sportswriter and Irvington native Sandford “Sandy” Hunt gave his play-by-play account at New York’s Polo Grounds (where the landlord Giants and tenant Yankees played all of its series games) into a telephone.
That phone line went into WJZ’s rooftop studio – and to the ear of station announcer Thomas Cowan, of West Orange. Cowan then recounted the action into the station’s transmitter and into the Westinghouse radio receiver sets that were tuned to 360 meters. Although the station had a 200-mile radius footprint, metropolitan Newark was its primary audience.
WJZ, following Pittsburgh pioneer KDKA, was the second radiotelephone station to be licensed in June 1921. Its staff was working on a blend of musical, children’s and news programming for its Oct. 1 on-air debut when it got a call from Hunt.
Hunt, the sportswriter from the Call’s 91-83 Halsey St. office, pitched the World Series coverage to the station. The third generation of the Sunday Call Hunt family was a former Cornell football player.
The American League Yankees, in their first Series appearance, won the Oct. 5 opener, 3-0. The National League Giants, however, became World Champions by winning five games to three. (The Series was permanently switched to a best-of-seven format one year later)
WJZ, before the Giants clinched the series, received around 4,000 cards and letters, praising the station’s public service. Westinghouse carried the 1922 series on now-four stations – before selling WJZ to rival Radio Corporation of America. RCA moved the studio to New York City – where it ultimately became WABC 770 AM in 1953.
Cowan, credited as radio’s first sportscaster. also became the first voice heard on WNYC-AM in 1925, WJZ’s call letters are now worn by a Baltimore AM radio and a television station.
WJZ’s first World Series opened a floodgate of live remote radio coverage – including intercollegiate football games, boxing prizefights, courtroom trials and other “as-it-happens” events.
