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Unlimited Baseball Telecasts Defended, I Hit During Hearing In Public Interest, Says f" Spokesman for Radio-TV; Would Be Suicide: Rickey By JOHN A. GOLDSMITH United Press Staff Correspondent WASHINGTON, D. C, May 8.— A radio-TV spokesman defended unlimited baseball broadcasting today, but Branch Rickey said this would be "suicide" for the sport j and Sen. Edwin C. Johnson called it "off 1 base." These opinions were aired at a Senate commerce subcommittee studying a bill to allow baseball to restore a rule which . banned broadcasts or telecasts by one club in the home territory of another. The rule was modified in 1949 and abandoned two years later under threat of antitrust prosecution from the Justice Department. Johnson is a Colorado Democrat, the author of the bill and the chairman of the subcommittee considering it. He also is president of the class A Western league. Rickey is a well-known baseball executive who has been called "the father of baseballs farm system." Opposition to the Johnson bill was expressed in a letter to the Johnson subcommittee from Harold E. Fellows, president of the National Association of Radio and Television Broadcasters, who said: "Anything that would lessen broadcasters ability to bring major league baseball to the American people would be contrary to the public interest." Picturesque Rebuttal This brought a picturesque rebuttal from Rickey, late of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers and now general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Rickey alluded to previous testimony that big league radio-TV broadcasts were destroying minor leagues and hence causing the majors to "eat their young." Then he went a gastronomic step further. "Destruction of the minor leagues is not just eating our young, but eating ourselves," he said. "Its a quick destruction of ourselves that is being forced upon us — a suicide." After hearing this testimony, the subcommittee adjourned for lunch. Johnson remarked that Fellows "is considerable off base — to use a good baseball term. Hes off base in his fundamental thinking on this subject." Sen. John W. Bricker R.-O., who used to be a catcher on a college baseball team and knows a baseball term or two himself, said the Justice Department also got "clear off base" when it "threatened" anti-trust action. Rickey cast reflections on the "motives" of the radio-TV opposition to the Johnson , bill, suggesting the broadcasters may be motivated by revenue rather than such a , high-minded thing as love of baseball. "When a fanciful radio melodrama will , pay a little more money," said Rickey, "we are dropped immediately." Fellows said passage of the bill would set a "dangerous precedent" and might cause other sports or even the motion picture . industry to seek protection from TV com- . petition. He said the public has "a legiti- ! mate and intense interest" in the right to "unrestrained" broadcasts. Both Rickey and Johnson attacked Fellows statement that repeal of the baseball broadcast rule indicated a belief on the part of baseball that the rule was illegal. Baseball, they said, never believed such a thing.
