Red Sox on WHDH?

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

Joe wrote:

>I assume the Red Sox were on WBZ-TV since its inception.  I seem to
>remember that the Boston Braves were on WNAC and WNAC-TV.
>
>What I don't know is when the Red Sox first started on WHDH radio and
>whether they were on any other station before that.  Donna?
>
I can promise the Red Sox were not on WHDH before 1930-- there was no WHDH
till then!  Both Shepard at WNAC and the fine folks at WBZ claim to have
first run baseball in the 1920s-- difficult to document, but I know that my
beloved 1XE/WGI ran baseball scores as early as 1921.  And WBZ definitely
ran Bruins hockey first-- Frank Ryan was the announcer, and I believe it was
1924.  The Bruins went back and forth between WBZ and several other
stations-- for a while, WHDH had them, but in 1969, they switched back to
WBZ... later they left again, etc etc-- Hey, remember Fred Cusick-- he did
the Bruins games for much of the 50s and then WBZ Radio hired him in 1969 to
do the Bruins games for them, replacing the equally respected Bob Wilson...
But I digress...

In the 1920s and 30s, the Red Sox were absolutely on WNAC; the Boston Braves
were on the other Shepard station, WAAB, where I recall reading that they
had a very controversial sportscaster, Fred Hoey, whom Shepard tried to fire
but whom the audience defended so vociferously that Shepard had to re-hire
him...   

The Red Sox moved over to WHDH in the 1940s-- I'll get an exact date for you
later today, okay?  And yes, I have schedules from as early as 1949 that
show WBZ-TV had the Red Sox games... Interestingly, WBZ Radio had a
well-known sportscaster during the 1940s who was a former major league
baseball player-- Bump Hadley-- but he never got to do any Red Sox games,
since WBZ didn't have the Red Sox on radio...  

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