The first baseball radio broadcast was on August 5, 1921. The game was broadcast by KDKA of Pittsburgh, and the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Philadelphia Phillies, 8-5. It was broadcast by Harold Arlin, KDKA's announcer. That year, KDKA and WJZ of Newark broadcast the first World Series on the radio.  However, the broadcasters were not actually present at the game, but simply gave reports from a telegraph wire (recreation).

In those days many radio stations often did not have the budgets or technology to broadcast games live from the park. Instead, stations would recreate the games in studio.  A telegraph operator would transmit the information back to the studio from the ball park where broadcasters and engineers would recreate game action from the ticker tape. Crowd noise, the crack of the bat, the umpire on the field and other sounds of the game were all manufactured in the studio as the game was being played live elsewhere.

The number of times these recreations were broadcast was relatively small, but their early creativity and ingenuity continue to capture the imagination of modern-day fans accustomed to live baseball action on radio, television and the Internet.  Interruptions in the telegraphy reports would lead to an immediate "rain delay" announcement at the station  to mask the problem. 

Radio broadcasters recreated baseball games in their studios from information received by telegraphy transmission. 

(Courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library)

(Courtesy of EarlyRadioHistory.us)