ABSTRACT
In one sense it reflected American postwar arrogance about the nation's centrality in world affairs that people across the globe cared about all things American, including its idiosyncratic national pastime. Significantly, still others saw, rather than heard the shot in homes, in bars, or standing on the street outside store windows with television sets, many of them watching their first televised baseball game. Thus, Thomson's home run, the last great moment of radio sportscasting, simultaneously offered the first nationally televised sports highlight. World Series attendance nonetheless remained high, but Dodger President Branch Rickey concurred in his arch rival MacPhail's assessment of the impact of television on the gate. Denver, according to Time, was experiencing not only its first live World Series, but its first television of any kind. Media reports focused primarily on the World Series, rather than the playoff television experience.
