At precisely 8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 24, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed a Western Union telegraph key in the White House and an electric pulse traveled 500 miles over copper wires to a signal lamp near first base at Crosley Field in Cincinnati.
When Cincinnati Reds President Larry MacPhail saw the lamp come to life, he flipped a switch on a small table in front of him, and 632 floodlights towering above the stadium came on. A crowd of 20,422 let out a huge roar as a new era in major league baseball got underway: night games.
This week, the 2019 Major League Baseball season kicked off with a handful of night games. But though they're common today, games played after dark haven't always been the norm. Prior to 1935, night games had been played only in the minor leagues: Teams discovered that even the Great Depression didn’t stop people from coming out, and that baseball under the lights often doubled or tripled attendance. Seeing the success in the minors, MacPhail received permission at the December 1934 National League meetings to introduce night baseball in Cincinnati.
