Baseball at Beekman's

the gentleman at the table was talking about when he was a kid in the 1930s in New Orleans, Louisiana. There was a store that sold men's goods called Beekman's. This is where he was fitted with his first pair of long pants, around age 7, for First Communion. Before that, he wore knickers. The transition from knickers to long pants represented a giant step toward manhood.

There was an overhang over the front of the store and when there were baseball games, a couple of fellows would man the canopy. They were able to receive data via telegraph from distant games in progress. As information flowed in, reduced to Morse code, one of the men at the New Orleans storefront would call the plays, like an announcer at the game. Because the information by telegraph was terse and limited, they filled in the blanks with action, with their own wild details of what could have led to the reported run or strike out. The people below loved the show.